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.

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

In speaking with GM fuel cell executives, it seems clear they are serious about getting hydrogen cars on the road. Project Driveway will last 3-1/2 years, they then hope to use the consumer feedback to begin a production process which could lead to getting the cars on the road in 2013.

GM argues that substantial hydrogen can be generated from natural gas (CH4) with a net effect of less energy expenditure and less CO2 emission than petroleum use. They feel it could work in highly populated areas by building a few strategically located filling centers at a cost of $2 million each. It won’t work in large low-population density regions.

About one half of the hydrogen already produced in the U.S. is currently used to “scrub” sulfur out of petroleum. Thus, this hydrogen could be used to store vehicular energy, be turned into water in fuel cell cars, and the sulfur-containing petroleum can stay in Saudi Arabia. Net effect: petroleum displacement.

Right now, there is just one hydrogen fueling station in the NYC region in White Plains. The first two chosen east coast real-world drivers for Project Driveway live or work there, one is a teacher and the other an attorney. They will get their cars in January. GM hopes to use this project to convince goverment to help set up a few more hydrogen fueling stations in the region. Click play below and take a drive with me.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqo7zDRLZGI]

We have been hearing for a while about GM’s project driveway (see post). This refers to their large-scale experiment in which 100 people will get to use Fuel Cell Equinoxes for several months of real world driving.

Originally slated to begin in the fall, the official word is that it has begun.

The first individuals and some celebrities have now been selected to take possession of the million dollar vehicles. Seven testers have been chosen for now, and will be receiving their vehicles in the first quarter 2008. Media events are underway on the west coast. D.C. and NYC are the next stops over the next few weeks.

GM will use the drivers experiences as feedback to help them develop not only future fuel cell vehicles but the Chevy Volt E-Flex/ICE as well.

GM wants to see how people deal with driving electric motor cars, as they are different in feel, sound, and handling. They also want to observe how people react to hydrogen fueling.

The SUVs are using 4th generation fuel cell technology and store hydrogen in compressed form. They have a 93 kw fuel stack and a 73 kw (94 kw peak) motor. They can store up to 4.2 kg of hydrogen which will give 150 miles of range.

Fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen into water and electricity, the electricity drives the motor. Regenerative brakes capture the kinetic energy into a NiMh battery.