PEM fuel cells are viewed as one of the most environmentally friendly propulsion systems for automotive travel in the future. However, the PEM fuel cell is still too expensive for wide-spread commercialization. Besides the membrane electrode assembly, manufacturing of bipolar plates by milling from graphite or graphite composites is a very expensive process. In order to achieve cost reduction and at the same time meeting several technical requirements for mass production, a stack concept using graphite composite bipolar plates was developed. The tests reported in this paper show that the design goal of 10 kW could be significantly exceeded. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.