GM Spreads Fuel Cell Message, Says U.S. Needs to Develop Hydrogen Fuel System
By John O'Dell March 17, 2010Effort Appears Aimed at Persuading Congress to Continue Hydrogen Program Funding
General Motors has continued developing its fuel cell program despite bankruptcy and says the technology, which uses hydrogen and oxygen to produce power for electric cars, is critical to the future of private transportation. GM's 'next generation' fuel cell system is about half the mass, more efficient and less costly than the present system.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
As Congress gets ready to tear into the Obama Administation's draft budget for fiscal 2011, fans of the hydrogen fuel cell are quietly marshaling forces in an effort to protect the funding they won back last year after then-new Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu cut automotive hydrogen programs funding from his inaugural departmental budget proposal.
Chu, to the dismay of automakers, universities and others who'd invested billions in fuel cell development, announced then that he didn't see much sense in spending federal dollars on further R&D because battery technology was the energy story of the day and fuel cells were a decade or more away from commercialization.
Congress, listening to howls from the trenches - a rarity, indeed - restored the money and this year Chu's budget includes $137 million for fuel cell research programs.
But that's almost $50 million less than the House and Senate approved last year and hydrogen backers must be fearful of a more penurious Congress - they've been popping up with some regularity in recent weeks after a fairly long silence, to remind us that despite all the hoopla over electric-drive vehicles like the battery-electric Nissan Leaf hatchback and Ford Transit Connect van and the Chevrolet Volt and Fisker Karma extended-range plug-ins, the industry is still working hard on fuel cell cars.
The latest to join the quiet lobbying effort is GM - following events such as Honda's January touting of its solar hydrogen station, Toyota's announcement that it has joined a European consortium aiming to promote fuel cell vehicles, and the unveiling of improved fuel cell powerplants by both Mercedes-Benz, in December, and Hyundai earlier this month.
General Motors rolled into Burbank, Calif., on Tuesday with a 2-hour presentation by Charlie Freese, the executive director of its fuel cell program, designed to generate interest and ink on the West Coast - home to several of the most active fuel cell development programs in the country, thanks to California's zero emissions mandate program, which will require automakers to churn out limited numbers of battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles for use in the state.
Freese, a former clean-diesel specialist, made it clear that despite its financial troubles, GM has never wavered in its believe that the fuel cell - which produces electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of a catalyst (usually platinum) - will some day help lead us out of the oil age.
He didn't have much new to say - most of his presentation was a recap of one he gave six months ago in Detroit when GM unveiled its next-generation fuel cell system, a compact marvel that's half the size and 220 pounds lighter than the one packed under the hood of the fleet of 119 Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) that have been running around in a public test program for more than two years and a collective 1.3 million miles now.
Freese did reveal, though, that GM has been updating some of the original Equinox FCEVs - not with the Gen 2 system but with other improvements that are boosting the fuel efficiency and performance of the present system - and presented the first of them to state transportation department biologist Stephanie White (right).
She will use it as her daily driver for the next two months as she commutes into downtown Los Angeles from her home in the Culver City area about 10 miles to the west.
White, who previously had been a driver of one of the first-generation Equinox FCEVs in GM's Project Driveway, said she considers herself an environmentalist and was "thrilled" to get the updated vehicle and the chance to drive emissions-free for another two months.
The point, of course, is that GM - even as it is about to break all kinds of ground with its Volt plug-in, an electric-drive car that uses rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and an internal combustion engine-generator to make electricity to keep the wheels rolling even when the battery charge is depleted - doesn't plan to stop there.
Or to join forces with those in the plug-in community (EV-maker Tesla Motors' Elon Musk, for one) who see battery-electric vehicles as the ultimate answer and hydrogen as an evil force that's not really energy efficient and that's threatening to soak up research funding that ought to go to battery and battery-charging infrastructure development.
Freese also used Tuesday's program to repeat - and it bears repeating - GM's message that hydrogen fuel cells, as refined as they've become, are pretty useless without a national hydrogen fueling infrastructure and to decry (politely and subtly, because after all, it's government money that's keeping GM alive) the federal government's seeming indifference to hydrogen.
Without a "consistent policy" toward infrastructure, America will fall far behind countries such as German, Japan and South Korea that are aggressively pursuing development of fuel cell vehicles and national hydrogen fueling networks to support them, Freese said.
Not much new there, but certainly worth repeating - and repeating, until people start hearing.
Meantime, GM is one of 9 major automakers (Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Daimler, Renault, Huyndai, Kia and Ford are the others) that have signed an agreement to bring fuel cell vehicles to market in five years.
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