The Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles and the US DoE Transportation Fuel Cells Programme

The aim of our paper is not to give a comprehensive view of fuel cell R&D activities in the United States. Our contribution is far more modest and attempts to present, according to the official and non-official literature we could gather, a description and analysis of a particular but important private-public R&D programme, namely the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) within which PEM fuel cells for transportation have been actively investigated since 1993. Although it was intended to last until 2004, PNGV was replaced in 2002 by a new programme called Freedom Car. One can speculate about the reasons for this premature ending. It appears however that the objectives, the organisation and the milestones of this ten-year programme needed to be brought into line with the technological, political and strategic evolutions that took place within this time frame at the national and international levels. According to official documents, the new initiative will last until 2010 and will give priority to fuel cell and hydrogen technologies as a long-term response to energy security and environmental issues.