GM’s Fuel-Cell Hedge
General Motors («www.businessweek.com») says it is determined to force fuel-cell vehicles past the chicken-or-the-egg stage, where they have been stuck for decades, with a goal of a small but commercially viable fuel-cell fleet by around 2015. Fuel cells run on hydrogen, producing electricity to run an electric motor. The only emission is pure water. But which comes first? Fuel-cell vehicles or the infrastructure to keep fuel-cell vehicles supplied with hydrogen fuel?
GM is tackling both in a modest way, in an effort called Project Driveway. “This is the first meaningful market test of fuel-cell vehicles,” said Mark Vann, GM’s program manager for fuel-cell activities, in a presentation in Tarrytown, N.Y., on Oct. 25. A Different Sort of Test-Drive
Starting Jan. 1, GM is launching a test fleet of 100 fuel-cell-powered Chevy Equinox sport-utility vehicles, to be driven in part by ordinary consumers for free, keeping the vehicles for up to three months each, over the next 30 months. Consumers who live in the Los Angeles, New York, or Washington metro areas can sign up via Chevrolet’s Web site.
Other automakers have made smaller test-fleet efforts, but with fewer fuel-cell cars and more tightly restricted groups of test-drivers. Like GM, most competitors use compressed, gaseous hydrogen. BMW («www.businessweek.com») is an exception, using supercold liquid hydrogen, which contains more energy in a given amount of space but is also more difficult to transport and handle.
To give the Project Driveway test-drivers a place to refuel, GM is installing four hydrogen fueling stations in the New York metro area, plus six more in the Los Angeles metro area. To put into perspective how little that is, there are approximately 170,000 regular filling stations across the U.S. GM’s fuel-cell cars will require more frequent fill-ups than gas-powered cars, since the fuel-cell vehicles have a range of only about 150 miles on one fill-up. Instead of a regular gas tank, the GM vehicles have three hydrogen tanks, which resemble oversize scuba tanks, under the rear seat and in the rear cargo area. Hydrogen Availability and Production Are Obstacles
Without delving too much into the science, the concept of a fuel cell is simple. Ordinary air, which contains oxygen, is blown across a thin, permeable film. Hydrogen is blown across the other side. Chemically, the oxygen and the hydrogen are a match made in heaven. The film acts as a catalyst: Two hydrogens combine with one oxygen each, thereby releasing an electron. The end products are electricity, pure water, and heat. Stack enough cells on top of each other, and you produce enough electricity to run an electric motor powerful enough to propel a car. Air is universally available and free. The hydrogen is the tough part.
The ordinary driver today has just about no access to hydrogen, despite its wide availability for commercial use. According to GM, 70% of the U.S. population lives near a hydrogen-generating facility. Often used in the production of ammonia-based fertilizers, most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, which raises another issue: If independence from fossil fuels is the ultimate goal of fuel-cell vehicles, hydrogen eventually will have to be produced using renewable power sources, such as wind or biomass.
“We trusted that by this stage, the infrastructure would be in place, and it’s not. So we’ve decided to do it ourselves,” said Britta Gross, GM’s manager, hydrogen infrastructure.
Gross said the nation’s only hydrogen filling station available to the public is owned by Shell Oil («www.businessweek.com»), in Washington, D.C. Shell built the station in 2004, in a deal with GM to refuel an earlier fleet of six GM demonstration vehicles. It has a visitors’ center to accommodate school field trips and President George W. Bush had a photo opportunity at the station in 2005, to observe a vehicle being refueled.
