: 2.3 Fuelled electric vehicles The basic principle of electric vehicles using fuel is much the same as with the battery electric vehicle, but with a fuel cell or metal air battery replacing the rechargeable electric battery. Most of the major motor companies have developed very advanced fuel cell powered cars. Daimler Chrysler for example have developed fuel cell cars based on the Mercedes A series, fitted with Ballard fuel cells, one of which is shown in Figure 2.6. Public service vehicles such as buses can more conveniently use novel fuels such as hydrogen,because they only fill up at one place. Buses are a very promising early applicationof fuelcells,Zinc air batteries produced by the Electric Fuel Transportation Company have been tested in vehicles both in the USA and in Europe. The company's stated mission is to bring about the deployment (employ) of commercial numbers of zinc-air electric buses,in this decade. During the summer of 2001 a zero emission zinc -airtransport bus completed tests at sites in New York State,and later in the year was demonstratedin Nevada. The future of electric vehicles, of course, remains to be written. However, the need forvehicles that minimize the damage to the environment is urgent. Much of the technology toproduce such vehicles has been developed and the cost, currently high in many cases,is likelyto drop with increasing demand and, which will allow quantity production. There is a real prospect of cities and towns using zero emission vehicles, and also of vehicles that use electrical technology to reduce fuel consumption . It is up to engineers , scientists and designers to make this a reality.