Development of a very light fuel cell vehicle with an innovative sandwich body

The german aerospace center’s research project Next Generation Car aims at the improvement of road vehicles with respect to their environmental impact and efficiency as well as their usability. Research and development is performed on a systemic level and also for the development of individual systems and technologies, which are integrated into entire vehicle concepts. These concepts are first developed on a virtual level, by use of computer aided design and finite element simulation. Successful simulations then result in the fabrication of hardware prototypes. Within the Next Generation Car project, a very light, two-seat- vehicle concept for the L7e class is developed. The vehicle is based on an innovative sandwich construction, and is developed as one of three vehicle concepts. The crashworthiness of the car body, which weighs only 90 kg, is investigated by finite element simulation, as well as experimentally. The goal is to achieve a crashworthiness that is comparable to conventional vehicles, in spite of the very low weight. Essential for the crash perfor-mance, as well as the vehicle handling, is also the concept of the lightweight, double-wishbone chas-sis. Due to the low driving resistance, as well as the use of a fuel-cell-hybrid drive-train, a range of 400 km is possible. The current state of development of the vehicle concept will be presented, as well as an outlook for the future development.