Last week, Ford debuted a hydrogen-fueled, battery-powered plug-in in the new Airstream concept vehicle last week at the North American International Auto Show.

The HySeries Drive system already is on the road in a Ford Edge prototype, which will be shown publicly for the first time on Jan. 23 at the Washington, D.C., Auto Show.

The system is called HySeries Drive; it’s powered by a 336-volt lithium-ion battery pack at all times and has a range of 25 miles on a full electric power.  The hydrogen-powered fuel cell begins generating electricity to recharge the batteries once the battery pack is depleted by about 40 percent, increasing range another 280 miles, for a total driving range of more than 300 miles.

At home, the battery pack can be refreshed by plugging into a standard outlet. The HySeries Drive powertrain delivers a combined city/highway gasoline equivalent fuel economy rating of 41 miles per gallon and can travel up to 85 mph.

Scott Staley, Ford’s chief engineer of Hybrid and Fuel Cell Technology, says another advantage of the HySeriesDrive is its fuel, engine and energy-conversion flexibility; “For example, you could take out the fuel cell and replace it with a hydrogen internal combustion engine, or I could replace the fuel cell and hydrogen tank with a diesel tank and a diesel engine.  And instead of a six- or eight-cylinder engine, I could use a considerably smaller three- or two-cylinder engine as an auxiliary power unit to recharge the battery pack.”

The innovative powertrain reduces the size, weight, cost, and complexity of a conventional fuel cell system by more than 50 percent and promises to more than double the lifetime of the fuel-cell stack.