An electrifying performer

By Jerome Glass

Date: 24/03/05

From a standing start, it can reach 100 km per hour in less than 12 seconds, it has smoother cornering than any car currently on the market, and a top speed of 130 km/h. Not bad for a car that runs on batteries. The Michelin Hy-Light is a remarkable concept car. Developed by Michelin in conjunction with the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland, this nippy two-door four-seater was one of several hydrogen-fuelled cars and buses on display at a ride-and-drive event last week in Brussels.

The Hy-Light is not to be confused with the ill-fated electric car experiments of the past. Here at last is an electric car that performs close to the benchmark levels for 'normal' cars.

The big innovation of the Hy-Light is that it has not one, but two individual traction motors, one for each of the front wheels. This provides the car with an incredibly responsive active suspension system.

Of course, fuel cell cars such as this one still have quite a way to go before they replace current models, not least in terms of price (as it stands, General Motors estimates that it has invested nearly a billion euro on its HydroGen 3 vehicle). On top of this, a top speed of 130 km/h is unlikely to have petrol-heads drooling with excitement. Engineers from Michelin-PSI admit that the Hy-Light is very much a town car and point out that developing fuel-cell cars that can compete in performance with a combustion engine is going to take many more years. Still, there was enough evidence on display at the ride-and-drive event to suggest that fuel cell cars will soon have the kind of performance to rival some petrol cars. As a re-working of an old advertising slogan might have it: you can with a Nissan, it's harder with a Lada, but one day you might with a Hy-Light.

Article looks at the Michelin Hy-Light, an electric car.

• Prif ffynhonnell