Mercedes F-Cell celebrates anniversary

Indeed the entire 14 country, four continent, 30,000km F-Cell World Drive would be carbon neutral if not for the need to ship tank loads of the hydrogen on which this aptly bright green-coloured quartet runs.

By the time the trek finishes in Stuttgart in June, where it also started on January 30, the B-Class F-Cells will have been refuelled some 400 times but emitted nothing but vapour.

F-Cell World Drive team leader Arwed Niestroj says the global run marks the 125th anniversary of the automobile's invention by Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz, "an opportunity to look back but looking specifically into the future".

"With this tool we want to convert the few remaining sceptics that the B-Class F-Cell is ready for long distances."

While the car can make 400km between refuelling, the lack of filling stations (there are all of 70 scattered across in 15 countries) recalls the very earliest long distance drive which Bertha Benz took without her husband's knowledge. On that pioneering fang, Frau Benz was forced to stop at a pharmacy for fuel.

In a sense the F-Cell is a hybrid, using an electric battery to start the vehicle and assist the hydrogen fuel cell in delivering power to the electric motors during acceleration. The battery pack is also recharged by the fuel cell and with regenerative braking much like a Toyota Prius.

Capable of 170km/h with performance roughly equivalent to a 2.0-litre petrol engine, 200 F-Cells will be on the roads on Germany, Norway and and the US next year with full scale production due in 2015. Refuelling takes some three minutes at a bowser through a conventional pump into the car's tanks.

The hydrogen cells are stored under the floor in impact resistant casings and so don't impinge on passenger or luggage space. Using some 1kg of H2 every 100km, the F-Cell system can be used in vehicles from coaches to city cars.

To drive the B-Class F-Cell is quite conventional, a comfortably familiar sensation to a hybrid owner, only marginally less so to steering a conventional car. Almost silent at start up the thunking of the automatic door locks seems alarmingly loud. Driven through a single speed automatic transmission, we seem to coast around Sydney's Pyrmont. It is remarkably unremarkable.

But while Niestroj can say "we have invented the automobile a second time," this counts for little until government and industry clamber aboard and the infrastructure to make ownership a practical proposition appears.

"We're doing our part," says Mercedes-Benz Australia spokesman David McCarthy. "Emission free motoring is the future. A lot of the competition is taking about zero emissions, we're walking the walk."