Electric Blue
The Electric Blue was a 1980 Ford Courier pickup truck that was
converted in 2002 to run on a hydrogen fuel cell. The Electric
Blue originally was an electric vehicle which ran on battery power.
The Electric Blue was the only hydrogen fuel cell vehicle to
run in the 2002 Tour de Sol road rally starting in Baltimore,
going to Washington DC and finishing in New York City with various
promotional stops along the way. The Electric Blue project consisted
of high school students, college students, alternative car advocates
and engineers.
Electric Blue's Technical Program Manager, Mike Strizki helped
students put all of the components together. The Star Ledger quotes
Strizki as saying, "What's unique about this project is that
we've taken the oldest modern-day electrical vehicle out there
and put space-age technology in it.
"We've done it with no budget, just a bunch of grassroots
volunteer students and engineers. I'm doing it for a few thousand
dollars, not $4 million. This one we rescued from a scrap yard.
It took me and a lot of students many hours to restore the truck
to original condition. The truck only had 8,000 miles, but had
a lot of rot."
Mike Strizki himself now has the only solar-hydrogen home in
New Jersey located in East Amwell. In his garage sits the New
Jersey Genesis which is another hydrogen fuel cell vehicle he
had worked on.
A company called H Cell donated two 500-watt hydrogen PEM fuel
cells for the Electric Blue truck. They were stored in the bed
of the truck along with a 3,800 psi hydrogen tank made of composite
materials.
The hydrogen for the Electric Blue was produced with renewable
energy from a hydroelectric plant in Canada by electrolyzing water
into hydrogen and oxygen. The Electric Blue completed its road
rally without incident.
|
