The Reasonably Priced 200-Mile Electric Car May Exist Soon.

Does it seem like there is an announcement about a game-changing new battery technology every hour these days? Cella Energy in England says it has a system that will make a reasonably priced 200-mile electric car possible. It will be able to travel without ever recharging, theoretically. Instead, all a driver needs to do is drop a small hydrogen pellet into a hopper and motor on for another 200 miles. No wires, no plugs, no hoses, and no fuss. Sound a bit fanciful? Let’s take a closer look.

Cella employs just 20 people at its headquarters in Oxfordshire and has a laboratory at the NASA Space Centre in Florida. Using funding from the British government, it is already using this hydrogen pellet fuel cell system to triple the amount of time an Aerial Unmanned Vehicles (AUV) can stay airborne. It has a contract with the Israeli Defence Forces to supply the special batteries for use with medium-sized surveillance drones.

How would Cella’s technology work in automobiles? In an interview with the Sunday Express last week, Prof Stephen Bennington, Cella’s managing director, said: “We make a solid-state gas generator that provides clean hydrogen which you can feed into a small pure fuel cell and drop in as a battery replacement. That has huge implications.”

The energy is created when a hydrogen pellet – which can be the size of a marble – is heated up to 120 degrees. An electric control system then creates a continuous flow of hydrogen which is filtered into a fuel cell. The system is a third the weight of a lithium-ion battery, and the smallest batteries weigh a mere 1 kilogram.

Prof Bennington, who is also a professor of nanotechnology, says: “And, of course, this technology will finally give electric cars the range they need to be practical. Hydrogen fuel cells would allow an electric car to reach a range of, say, 210 miles which would mean you could take a proper trip to visit relatives in a reasonably priced electric car just by replacing the battery.”

We colonials may have a bit of cognitive dissonance as we try to wrap our heads around the idea that a fuel cell can also be called a battery, but keep in mind we are talking about England here, a land where a convertible is a drophead coupe, where you put your luggage in the boot, and where shock absorbers are called dampers.

The principal advantage of the Cella Energy system is that the hydrogen to run the fuel cell is contained in a small pellet that is chemically stable. No high-pressure storage tanks are needed; no volatile hydrogen gas needs to be stored on board. The pellets can be kept in the glove compartment, aka glove box, until needed.

Whether there is a future for the Cella Energy system for automotive transportation remains to be seen. We know little about how the company actually goes about making those hydrogen pellets, but this is something we will definitely keep our eye on.