Presently they have a fleet of hydrogen fuel cell Chevy Equinoxes in public hands. These vehicles have been on the roads over a year and have collectively logged over 1 million miles.

Now GM has unveiled its next-generation fuel cell system

The new system is 220 pounds lighter than the one currently found in the Equinox, and uses half the amount of precious metals. It contains GM’s fifth generation fuel cell stack and is small enough to fit under the hood of a sedan occupying as much space as a conventional 4 cylinder engine.

GM says it could commercialize the system by 2015, if the country is willing to set up the infrastructure necessary to support hydrogen vehicles.

“GM has invested more than $1.5 billion in fuel cell technology and we are committed to continuing to invest, but we no longer can go it alone,” said Charles Freese, executive director of GM Fuel Cell Activities. “As we approach a costly part of the program, we will require government and industry partnerships to install a hydrogen infrastructure and help create a customer pull for the products.”

For its part, Germany and Japan have both agreed to build up to 1000 hydrogen fueling stations by 2015.

“Failure to act will insure the U.S. cannot meet its long-term fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction objectives,” Freese said. “We know what needs to be done. Now is the time to get started.”

According to Volt spokesperson Rob Peterson GM still has no plans to put this system in future Chevy Volts as the range extender.

“Our focus remains solely on an internal combustion engine-generator for the Voltec system at this time,” he said.

Peterson also wouldn’t comment on the cost of this new fuel cell system. “As a matter of course, we do not provide cost estimates on our technologies,” he said.

Is it do or die time for hydrogen?  Most people are betting on batteries as A123’s rousing IPO performance today suggests.  The Massachesetts-based lithium-ion battery producer’s stock (AONE) began trading on the NASDAQ today, and soared over 50% from its opening price of $13.50 per share.

Source (GM)

Interest appears to be waning.

Tom Stephens is vice-chairman of GM and is responsible for product development. I had the chance to ask him his thoughts on hydrogen and what GM is doing with respect to development and production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles

Is the Volt the endgame or is it the fuel cell vehicle?
No. Each of them will continue going forward. My thesis is if you look at what’s going on for energy demand especially in the developing countries, the energy demand is going to continue to grow exponentially and we’re going to have to learn how to utilize energy from all sources if we’re going to have sustainable mobility. We haven’t done that in the last one hundred years. We’ve stayed on petroleum and that’s not a smart thing. It just doesn’t make any sense.

So going forward we are going to break it up

So are you still planning to produce fuel cell vehicles?
Right now what we have is a fuel cell demonstration fleet, Project Driveway, and we’re in one county and we’re going to four more countries and we’re trying to get a lot of customer feedback. We’re doing a lot of work on fuel cells right now to try and continue to move those forward.
At some point in the future we’ll have to decide whether we want to actually go into a production program.

So you haven’t made that decision yet?
No, not at this point. We could do it, but there are a lot of factors. One is our part which is the fuel cell stack and the fuel cell vehicle and how much it will cost. The other part happens to be the infrastructure in order to support the fuel cell and we’ll have to develop both of those.

Right now Germany and Japan are putting in an infrastructure for fuel cells and what we really need is for big US metropolitan cities to decide they want to put in the infrastructure and then it would make sense to go forward.

————————-
Mr Stephens appeared on Autoline Detroit TV today and took some of our questions. You can see the show below:

A lot has changed since then.  The Volt concept and countless other electric car programs have been introduced, and Obama has pledged to get 1 million plug-in cars on the road by 201.

Within months of first introducing the Volt concept a hydrogen fuel cell range-extender version was displayed, never to be heard from again.

Earlier this week in the setting of the Obama administration’s weeding of the federal budget, it was proposed the funding for hydrogen fuel cell spending be cut by 59% to a total of $68 million.

“We asked ourselves, ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will covert to a hydrogen car economy?’” said Energy Secretary Stephen Chu. “The answer, we felt, was ‘no.’”

Not surprisingly the National Hydrogen Association and the U.S. Fuel Cell Coalition issued a statement of disapproval.  Among other things they said:

The cuts proposed in the DOE hydrogen and fuel cell program threaten to disrupt commercialization of a family of technologies that are showing exceptional promise and beginning to gain market traction.

GM for its part has done considerable work on fuel cells and currently has a fleet of 100 Fuel Cell Equinoxes on the roads that have collectively logged well over half a million miles.  Their most recent viability plan still indicates long term expectations for fuel cell vehicles.

I asked Nick Zielinksi who is GMs director of advanced technology engineering whether he believes GM is shifting away from hydrogen fuel cell development.  “I don’t think were shifting, but there is some new balancing of priorities,” he said. “We still think there is a place for fuel cell vehilce in the future and were continuing to work on them.”

Source (Edmunds) and (NY Times)

Some automakers like Honda and GM have put a lot of resources into developing hydrogen vehicles. At the Detroit Auto Show in 2008, Honda unveiled its Clarity FCX fuel-cell sedan.

Author Dan Neil had a go at the car in the LA Times.

Neil said that despite his long experience driving many cars, he’d never driven one so advanced and “blinded with science” as the Clarity FCX. He derided the concept though calling hydrogen a poor way to move cars and describing it as a “tragic cul-de-sac” in the search for sustainable fuels. He noted that hydrogen fuel cell cars were nothing more than a way to game California’s CARB rules requiring automaker to build zero-emissions vehicles.

Hydrogen he says is a lousy way to move vehicles, not to mention that a hydrogen fueling network doesn’t exist and building one would cost countless billions. The electric grid, and power outlets on the other hand are already everywhere.

Neil also reports summarily that it requires 60 kwh of electricity to produce one kg of hydrogen, which in the FCX works out to an efficiency of 1.1 mile/kwh. Plug-in cars with lithium-ion batteries like the Tesla Roadster or the Volt get 5 miles/kwh, for a nearly five-fold increase in efficiency.

Furthermore he noted the FCXs likely cost around $2 million per car.

Finally though he gushes over the intense beauty and function of the car says “Behold, the grand and lovely futility of the FCX Clarity. It’s hard to scold something so wonderful, so I won’t. Just bring me one that I can plug in.”

And so it may well be that the hydrogen highway may very well be the road to nowhere.

Source (LA Times)

A new study was just published in which researchers estimated it would cost $200 Billion in research and infrastructure to bring fuel cell vehicles to mass market levels.

The study analyzed the cost of bringing 2 million fuel cell cars to the roads by 2020 and 25 million by 2030. It was determined that to achieve such a ramp up, the government would need to spend $55 billion between 2008 and 2023 and private industry would need to spend $145 billion.

It was noted in the article that the high and rising cost of platinum makes of 57% of the cost of fuel cell stacks and was a significant barrier, as well, from the article "future platinum supply is a critical issue in forward projections of fuel-cell costs."

So while a production-intent fuel-cell Chevy Volt program is underway at GM, there remains serious considerations whether fuel cells will become the dominant vehicle type.

The study logically concludes that the best approach to displacing petroleum will be to develop a portfolio of alternative fuel vehicles including battery EVs, hybrids, and bio-fuel cars in addition to fuel cells.

Source (Marketwatch )

On a somewhat related note, Al Gore just gave a speech in which he challenged the U.S. to an initiative to achieve 100% fossil-fuel free electricity in 10 years. He cited not just environment concerns but those of national security as well.

Source (Text of Speech )

The TV commercial will apparently begin with the following Dear John letter from GM:

“Dear Oil,
We’ve had this great relationship for many years. We think we will both be a lot happier and healthier if we see less of each other.”

It truly remarkable to see the changes that are underfoot. A massive industry, and a leading giant within it is beginning to swear off the stuff that made it all happen for the last 100 years.

Source (Automotive News, subscription required)

On a related note, GM has just announced a partnership with Clean Energy Fuels Corp to build a new hydrogen fueling station in Los Angeles near LAX. GM has been engineering hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for some time and already has a fleet of 100 fuel cell Equinoxes in consumers hands called Project Driveway (see my test drive video). The fuel cell generator Volt is also production intent (2012′ish), and now has Nick Zielinksi as its vehicle line director.

Despite GMs clear desire to bring fuel cells to the masses, they have been stymied by the lack of infrastructure. Apparently reluctant to wait for the infrastructure to build itself, and spurred by the latest gas and oil prices, GM has obviously decided to help do it themselves.

In the words of Mary Beth Stanek, director of energy and environmental policy & commercialization at GM, “Developing and growing hydrogen infrastructure is vital to GM’s efforts to bring larger volumes of fuel cell vehicles to the market.”

Source (GM)

GMs vice-chairman is Bob Lutz, he is the father of the Chevy Volt and shepherding its development along personally. When he says something about the car, it has validity, and often he will be the first to leak out news, sometimes I suspect, against the wishes of GMs PR people. One thing is certain to me, he is honest.

His recent comments about global warming reverberated intensely through the blogosphere, and indeed still do.

Now here’s another goodie. People on this site and others have railed against the idea of hydrogen fuel cell cars, making the logical argument that long-range batteries are a simpler and more efficient answer. This is in spite of the fact that GM and other automakers seem to be making pushes towards fuel cells.

Mr.Lutz recently told reporters:

“If we get lithium-ion to 300 miles, then you need to ask yourself, Why do you need fuel cells?”

Good question Mr. Lutz.

Source (Wall Street Journal)

The Cadillac Provoq is GM’s latest E-Flex concept car, a luxury crossover with all wheel drive and fuel cell range-extender. Nick Zielinski who used to be the ICE Volt’s chief engineer is now the chief engineer of the hydrogen Volt and Provoq, as well as the fuel cell Equinox. I had a few moments to speak with Nick at the Provoq Detroit unveiling (see post).

What brought about the Provoq design?

We’ve been intrigued with trying doing something with Cadillac, its our high line vehicle, our technology leader, taking our most advanced technology propulsion system and marrying that with Cadillac made a lot of sense.

When you figure fuel cells as we introduce them are going to be low volume and they’re going to be more expensive than traditional propulsion systems. So it made sense from a marketing standpoint to link up with a high line vehicle. It was just a nice marriage between the image of Cadillac and the technology of our most advanced propulsion system. So my role in that one was around the propulsion system of E-flex, since I’m doing the E-Flex fuel cell off the Chevy Volt, we also did the Provoq.

Are you actually in the production pipeline, moving towards a hydrogen fuel cell Volt?

Were working on an E-Flex version of the fuel cell as opposed to the generator set, and were working in the same way were working the regular E-Flex for the Volt. We are moving towards production. We are not making any commitments on production timing. We’ve got a number of issues. We are working on our fifth generation fuel cell stack. Similar to the battery, the readiness of that fuel cell is going to take whether we introduce it and when we introduce it.

Is the fifth generation lighter or smaller or more efficient that the fourth generation?

There are a number of drivers. One of the big things we are doing for the fifth generation is physically making the stack part of it smaller. In our Equinox program the fuel cell stack is pretty tall and what we want to do is get that system smaller. That way we can pack it into a broader range of vehicles. Because of the height of the current stack there were some limitations on the vehicles you could put them into. So the next generation will have much broader application, also some new technologies to address durability which is an issue we continue to need to work on in our fuel cell systems.

What do you mean by durability? Are they fragile and not handle road vibrations well?

No. Thats not really an issue. The way a fuel cell works is they like to be what we call a steady-state device. They like to produce power at a certain operating level and stay that way. A car is a dynamic device. You have to increase the amount and oxygen and hydrogen to get more voltage to make a car accelerate. What happens in a fuel cell is those transients take a little bit of the life out of the stack. So we have to make sure we understand the materials and the chemistries and the membrane that does the conversion to electricity. Things like starting it and stopping it affect that durability. So a lot of work to pull all that stuff together.

USA today recently published a piece including an interview with Larry Burns, GM’s VP of R&D.  Burns described GM’s push to develop fuel cell cars as a competitive race with other auto manufacturers, who he’s paranoid are up to the same thing.

He is further quoted as saying that GM could deliver production fuel cell cars as early as 2011, and most likely to be in the form of the fuel cell Chevy Volt, the concept of which was first unveiled in Shanghai (see prior post)
It is expected that fuel cell Volts could hit dealerships a year after the ICE-version arrives in 2010.  The cars would number only in the hundreds and obviously be limited to locations where hydrogen fueling centers are available (there are 16 in LA and 1 in NYC metro right now).

Also it is reported that these hydrogen Volts would have to be leased as their cost will be quite high.

This information seems consistent with recent discussions I’ve had with Nick Zielinksi and other GM fuel cell experts, and the fact that Nick was made the chief engineer of the hydrogen Volt, with a new separate executive in charge of the ICE Volt; Andrew Farah. This shift indicated production-intent for both vehicles (see prior post).

Source (USA Today)

Topics on the video:

-Charging issues
-Hydrogen
-Mules
-Efficiency
-Future product plans
-Certainty of production