Worcestershire, England - British automaker Morgan has announced it will debut its new fuel cell LIFECar concept at the Geneva Motor Show in March.
The LIFECar is powered by a fuel cell sized to meet the constant load requirement of cruising, with a significant reduction in weight and cost over other designs. The concept vehicle also captures energy during braking, allowing maximum performance during acceleration; the company says that while current applications offer around 10 per cent energy reuse from regenerative braking, the LIFECar is able to employ up to 50 per cent of stored kinetic energy.
Electricity generated by the fuel cell is directed to four electric motor/generators, each connected directly to a driving wheel. Rather than batteries, the concept stores power in a bank of ultra capacitors, which have the ability to shuffle up to 1,000 amps back and forth, maximizing energy storage during braking and delivering powerful acceleration.
The LIFECar has been engineered to deliver the energy consumption equivalent of 1.8 L/100 km on gasoline, with a top speed of up to 137 km/h, a zero-to-100 km time of less than seven seconds, and a range of 402 km.
