Following their big announcement in October about signing a joint “Letter of Understanding” with fellow automakers to push forward the development of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) and the hydrogen infrastructure, Hyundai-Kia has come forth with even more detail about their fuel cell vehicle program.

At the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technical Advisory Committee earlier this week in Arlington, Virginia, Todd Suckow from Hyundai-Kia gave a presentation revealing some of the tremendous progress the company has made with regards to FCVs.   They have been actively introducing FCVs for several years now, starting with the Tuscon and Tucson FCVII and evolving to the Sportage FCVII and the Borrego FCV, Hyundai-Kia has had more than 30 cars participating in a U.S. Department of Energy Fleet Program and the same number in a similar program in Korea.   The Korean program also includes the demonstration of four fuel cell buses.  The Borrego FCV recently participated in a public road test starting at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California and drove 396 miles to Los Angeles on a single tank of hydrogen with about 75 miles still to spare.  The car has an estimated range of around 471 miles and the average fuel efficiency for the run was 60.47 mpkg.

The 4^th generation of the Hyundai-Kia FCV is set to start small scale production in 2012. We can’t wait.