F-Cell: From test rig to winter testing

It’s the crack of dawn in northern Sweden, up in the latitudes where they still get genuine winter weather. A handful of men in blue-gray jackets trudge through the snow, collars turned up and Mercedes baseball caps pulled down low. It’s a team of test drivers from Daimler Research and Development, here for three weeks in these wintry climes, putting the new B-Class F-Cell through its paces. In charge of this latest series of trials for the new F-Cell generation is Bernd Löper and his department for Design, Testing, and Operational Strategy. Day after day, the fuel cell cars purr through the snowy landscape, while laptops record an array of data from measuring instruments and hundreds of sensors.

A good 2,500 kilometers south of the testing ground, these results are eagerly awaited by the 150 research and development engineers working in Fuel Cell Drive Development, which is headed by Christian Mohrdieck. Activities in this field are split between two Daimler locations in Germany: researchers based in Ulm test the feasibility of new fuel cell concepts, whereas engineers at the Development Center in Kirchheim-Nabern take the most promising of these ideas and turn them into fully functional components and systems.