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Ah-ha! The plot surrounding DoCoMo’s fuel cell efforts thickens. After talking for years about how it was developing a super-duper fuel cell with Fujitsu, about which it has now gone strangely quiet, DoCoMo has just come out of stealth mode and fessed up that it’s in fact working with Aquafairy on a cell that’s twice as powerful as last year’s Fujitsu jobbie.
Direct methanol fuel cell designs such as Fujitsu’s have been in a lot of trouble recently, with deadlines slipping all the way into the gutter. Fujitsu’s latest effort, shown last July, was supposed to be three times more powerful than its predecessor and should have completed development four months ago. (The pictures we’re using are of the very same Fujitsu prototype.) So where is it? When we talked to DoCoMo about this three weeks ago, there was no fixed schedule for commercialization.
Meanwhile, the word has been out for some time that methanol is a rotten fuel (membranes shot after 1,000 hours, typically, and not powerful enough), and that alternatives, including polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs), are the way to go.
And then, presto! Here’s DoCoMo announcing a PEFC with Aquafairy. As usual, the fuel cell is the smallest in the world, blah blah, and it’s going to be on display at Wireless Japan, blah blah. But what do they not mention? When they are going to commercialize it. And for that matter, who are Aquafairy, anyway?
(Via DoCoMo)
05:44 PM 
Paul Kallender •
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