Georgetown University has been at the forefront of the development of transportation fuel cells for over 20 years. The Advanced Vehicle program has been funded primarily by grants from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The key objectives of GU's Advanced Vehicle program are to support the development of fuel cell technology and assist industry in commercialization of fuel cells for transit applications.

Fuel cells produce electricity by electrochemically combining hydrogen and oxygen into water. On the Georgetown buses, the hydrogen is extracted from liquid methanol and the oxygen is from ambient air. Fuel cells have a number of advantages over conventional propulsion systems - they are more efficient, quieter, and have very low emissions. In addition, the use of methanol as a fuel can reduce dependence on imported oil, since methanol can be domestically produced from renewable resources or coal. For further information, see our Program Details page.



Advanced Vehicle Development at Georgetown began in 1983, with feasibility studies for fuel cell powered transit buses conducted with Los Alamos National Laboratory. The success of these studies led to the development of two 25 kW phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) brassboard systems to demonstrate the technology, followed by the Generation I Bus Program, in which three 30-foot buses using 50 kW PAFC power plants were developed.

After thorough testing and evaluation of the 30-foot buses was complete, the FTA funded Georgetown's Generation II Fuel Cell Bus Program. There were two 40-foot transit buses produced during this program. Both buses have a 100 kW fuel cell power plant. The first bus, which was rolled out in May 1998, uses a PAFC built by UTC Power. The second Generation II bus, officially rolled out in 2001, uses a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) built by Ballard Power Systems.

The Generation III Bus Program was kicked off in 2006. Phase I of this program will be procurement of a methanol-fueled automotive PEM fuel cell system. For a more detailed history of our program, please see the timeline on our History page.