Hyundai Elec City Fuel Cell Bus Begins Testing in Europe

• Hyundai is bringing its hydrogen fuel cell bus to Munich, Germany, for testing on city routes.

• The bus has a range of more than 310 miles and a 180 kW output, with storage tanks positioned on the roof.

• Electric buses have a lead in Europe at the moment, with a number of big cities using fleets of hundreds of buses, ahead of plans for more.

While hydrogen fuel cell cars might be a tough sell to private consumers, as Honda recently discovered, there are other types of vehicles such as semi trucks and buses that could be far more suited to this type of fuel. Hyundai is among automakers most bullish on hydrogen at the moment, and it's not confining its hydrogen fuel cell efforts solely to passenger cars.

In the next few weeks Hyundai will begin real-world testing of its Elec City Fuel Cell bus in Munich, Germany, ahead of a possible commercial roll out of the model in Europe. 108 examples of the bus had already been built in South Korea starting in 2019, so this series of tests will allow two bus operators to evaluate the bus in the Munich area. The automaker handed over the single bus to Busbetrieb Josef Ettenhuber GmbH, and Geldhauser Linien- und Reiseverkehr GmbH & Co. KG at a hydrogen fuel station in Wendling, Irschenberg, Bavaria.

Hyundai's Elec City Fuel Cell bus has a range of more than 310 miles on a full charge, and features a 180-kW high-capacity hydrogen fuel cell system that uses two 90-kW fuel cells featuring a durable hydrogen diffusion layer paired with an electrolyte membrane. The hydrogen itself is stored in tanks on the roof, which can hold about 75 lbs of fuel—enough for the 310+ miles of range.