Fuel cell, manufacturing scale-up and commercialisation problems are particularly challenging and exciting because of the sheer volume of components required to build the repeat units of sub-assemblies required per kW of power. Many low carbon technologies have yet to go through the cost optimisation and design for manufacture necessary to scale up quickly and effectively.
This is a challenge that many low carbon technologies are currently facing. Until they have been commercialised they cannot move out of the laboratory and onto the market to contribute to reductions in emissions. The only way to get to market successfully is to have a commercially viable product that meets a customer need.
“It’s great to have small numbers of these vehicles running around. But be very, very clear the mission is to heavily penetrate the 70 million cars and trucks that are built worldwide each year with this technology” Larry Burns VP R&D and Strategic Planning at GM (just retired).
So what does that mean for fuel cell manufacturers? A fuel cell for a car might be constructed from a number of smaller units, and require around 360 plates.This means production run of 1 million plates per day.
These volumes catapult you very rapidly into the realms of mass manufacture with all the challenges of optimising product designs for manufacture, and developing automated manufacture, assembly and test processes together with reliable and efficient supply chains. These new functions typically require very different skills to the design and development excellence that has brought the company to its current position.
At PA, we help companies to bring products quickly to market, bringing many years of product and process development experience from across many sectors, designing products for manufacture, making sensible, achievable development plans, de-risking capital expenditure with a phased process development approach.
To find out more about successful fuel cell manufacturing scale-up and commercialisation, please contact us now.
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