“Volkswagen is still working on the fuel cell — a patent proves it”

In February 2022, Business Insider Deutschland broke the story: “Volkswagen is still working on the fuel cell — a patent proves it”. The exclusive uncovered the joint VW–kraftwerk patent and interviewed CEO Dr. Sascha Kühn — the piece that the press wave which followed, from AUTO BILD to Autocar, kept quoting.

At the centre is kraftwerk’s aSOFC: a 38-mm ceramic micro-tube of about one gram, whose nanocrystalline electrolyte converts fuel directly into electricity at 450–600 °C — without platinum and without lithium. It is the cell that classic solid oxide technology, bound to more than 800 °C and too fragile for vehicles, could never bring under a car floor.

The article started everything that followed: within months, the patent was covered from Germany’s biggest car magazine to the UK’s automotive institution and the US trade press. What it rests on has not changed — the granted patent DE102020119021B3, filed in July 2020 and granted in 2021, and five years of proof-of-concept work with the Volkswagen Group, including a test vehicle at 2,000 km on one tank.

The story the exclusive started can be followed across this site: the technology page explains the cell in full, with the datasheets available on request, the vehicle catalogue lists 38 models upgraded by kraftwerk, and the FAQ answers the questions the coverage raised. The original Business Insider article is linked from this page.