Hydrogen fuel cells may not be garnering the same level of attention as electric cars in recent times, but they still have a bright future if the latest innovation from PSA Peugeot Citroen is any indication.

The company is presenting a demonstrator equipped with the FiSyPAC (Fiabilisation systeme pile a combustile) hydrogen fuel cell range extender system at a show in Lyon that is designed to showcase hydrogen as a fuel source.

The FiSyPAC project was initiated in 2006 with finance from the French National Research Agency. The demonstrator comes with a 17kW GENEPAC fuel cell stack, a storage tank holding 4.2kg of hydrogen at 700bar and a 13kWh lithium-ion battery pack. The fully electric vehicle, which is based on a Peugeot 307 coupe, has a driving range of 311 miles with 47miles in charge depleting mode. Fuel consumption is 165Wh/km in charge depleting mode and 1.05kg/100km in range extending hybrid mode.

Since its initiation the project has focused on designing high performance, high efficiency components with significant advancements made thanks to collaboration with French research laboratories. Among the innovations is a controller that measures the state of the voltage of each individual cell of a fuel cell. Controlling these electric functions assumes an accurate knowledge of the state of health of the generator – if some of the cells are defective the entire performance of the fuel cell may be degraded.

PSA Peugeot Citroen has managed to quadruple the fuel cell’s lifespan while increasing efficiency by nearly 20 per cent. However, these advances do come with a number of road blocks such as the cost of the fuel cell system and lithium-ion batteries. As such, PSA doesn’t expect to begin mass marketing until the 2020-2025 timeframe.

The knowledge PSA is picking up is expected to be applied to a number of projects including the Peugeot Ion and Citroen C-Zero electric vehicles that will be introduced in late 2010 and the Peugeot 3008 and Citroen DS5 diesel hybrids scheduled to be introduced in 2011.