German technology major EDAG has successfully developed fuel cell drive system for the Mercedes-Benz GLC. The company says in addition to the electrification of vehicles with batteries, fuel cell technology offers a promising technology for the alternative drive of the future.

Daimler considers technology as an integral part of its drive strategy, and is now pushing forward with the Mercedes-Benz GLC F-CELL, which combines the innovative fuel cell and battery technology as a plug-in hybrid in a small series for the first time. The company says that the intelligent interaction between battery and fuel cell, the high mileage performance and short refuelling times make the GLC F CELL an everyday purely electric companion for short and long distances.

For this project, the world's largest independent automotive development service provider EDAG was commissioned with the integration development of the fuel cell drive system for the Mercedes GLC already at the end of 2015. The start of series production of the fuel cell version of the GLC is expected to commence shortly before the market introduction, with the first batch of vehicles to be soon available to selected customers.

The EDAG Group conducted the development, validation and procurement - including sampling - of the fuel cell-specific body shell, exterior and interior components as well as the implementation of a specific low-voltage cable set. In addition, the EDAG development team was responsible for the integration of the new, alternative Daimler drive version with the 'HVAC and cooling system' and large parts of the overall vehicle protection.

More than 100 EDAG engineers worked at the Sindelfingen, Boblingen, Fulda and the newly established Bremen production site in a cross-disciplinary development team for the future project of Daimler AG during the peak times of the project.

Since January 2017, a team consisting of 40 members from the EDAG Vehicle Prepare Centre have supported Daimler AG in the construction of prototypes, pre-series vehicles and small-series production in the Hanseatic city.

Cosimo De Carlo, CEO of the EDAG Group, said: “We are very happy that our end-to-end competence in engineering has convinced our customer Daimler right up to the hardware realisation. We were happy to take on this project task in order to proactively shape the vehicle transformation process with our expertise and innovative power.”

After the commercial launch, the EDAG Group will also implement and ensure the supply of vehicle-specific spare parts for the aftersales market. With the project, EDAG says it has further expanded its expertise in the area of H2 safety and hydrogen refuelling and qualified as a responsible engineering partner for this future-oriented drive technology.