GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

As we heard yesterday with its Hawaii utility partnership announcement, GM continues to move forward with its plan to commercialize hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.  The company has spent $1.5 billion and decades of effort in attempting to bring the technology to the mainstream.  GM hopes to make fuel cell vehicles commercially available by 2015.

Just prior to his retirement on May 1st, I had the chance to ask former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz for his thoughts about the technology.  Lutz had previously noted that hydrogen fuel cell backers within GM produced a lot of push back against the Volt in the early days after the concept was first shown.

“There was some resentment from the fuel-cell backers inside the company,”  he said.  ”Because I think they thought they would be the ones to transform the planet and get us off fossil fuels.”

What’s your thoughts on hydrogen fuel cells?
I like the technology. Once again General Motors has demonstrated that it mastered the technology better than anybody else. Our stack is the most efficient our stack of all the fuel cells vehicles that are out there is the most reliable and has the longest life.

We’re getting very close to solving the cost equation to where one could start thinking about mass producing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at a semi reasonable price. Way more than lithium ion batteries Im sorry to say . But coming down from astronomical figures to merely very high figures.

General Motors will solve this problem faster and better than anybody else.

The big concern is the one I’ve had from the beginning I the lack of distributed infrastructure. Where to you go to fill up your vehicle? With electricity that’s somewhat of a problem in urban areas in that I frequently hear from people living in large cities who say that’s it fine for you to say that you plug in at ahome because you lkive in a private residence but what about us poor guys who live in the cities and have the vehicle in a parking deck?
My answer to that is yes, that is a momentary problem. Parking garages will install metered outlets. Expanding the existing electric distribution network it relatively easy, it is quick and it involves low investment. But getting high pressure hydrogen everywhere is a different story. That involves hundreds of millions of dollars and given the state the country is in right now I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

I still accept I readily accept at some future point the hydrogen fuel cell could be a very viable electric vehicle alternative in that it would generate its own electricity on board, and could at some point compete with battery powered vehicles. But as we sit here right now and for the next five or ten years, the winning concept is going to be the lithium-ion powered electric vehicles with range extension enabled by a small gasoline engine.

That’s my prediction.

GM has partnered with Hawaiian utility company, The Gas Company (creative name), to develop a hydrogen fueling infrastructure on the island of Oahu.

Hawaii is particularly vulnerable to oil dependence as they rely on imported petroleum for 90% of their energy.

The Gas Company already produces synthetic hydrogen long with synthetic gas and distributes it through 1000 miles of pipeline.  Using a proprietary separation process the company will separate the hydrogen which makes up 5% of the flow and make it available for vehicles at strategic locations. Currently the hydrogen and methane are made from naptha but this will be transitioned over time to plant and animal fats.

The plan is to develop 20 to 25 new fueling stations which would be sufficient to satisfy the islands needs and place a filling station within a 10 minute drive of anyone living on the island.  Each station costs $300,000 to $500,000 to install and takes six months.  The mainland USA has only 68 hydrogen fueling stations at present.

GM has already invested $1.5 billion in developing fuel cell vehicles and is currently developing a production intent fuel system for retail sale in 2015.  The fuel cell Equinox Project Highway program has been operational since 2007 and has already achieved more than 1.4 million miles of driving in over 100 cars.

Presently there is one next generation fuel cell Equinox on the ground in Oahu and more will be added as part of this program.

“This is the type of enabler that a hydrogen transportation infrastructure needs because it addresses both the source of the hydrogen and a feasible way to deliver it for fuel cell vehicle use,” said Charles Freese, executive director of GM Global Fuel Cell Activities. “The Hawaii infrastructure could eventually support tens of thousands of fuel cell vehicles.

Hawaii hopes to acheive an eventual 70% reduction in petroleum use through teh use of renewable energy sources.

“We have been delivering as much as 12 percent hydrogen made from renewable sources to our gas customers over the last two to three years and expect we can deliver even greater quantities of hydrogen as demand increases,” said Jeffrey Kissel, president and CEO of TGC. “By delivering hydrogen through our existing infrastructure as vehicle fuel wherever we have gas, The Gas Company expands its key role of supporting Hawaii’s clean energy future.”

Source (GM)

The hydrogen fuel cell powered car remains an elusive advanced technology transportation strategy that continues to have an uncertain future.

GM has worked for years and has spent over $1.6 billion to develop fuel cells that convert pressurized hydrogen into electricity. Since late 2007 their Project Driveway program has placed more than 100 fuel cell Equinoxes in willing participants’ hands.

Two major problems with hydrogen-powered cars are the exorbitant cost of the technology (the fuel cell Equinoxes are said to cost $1 million a piece), and the lack of hydrogen fueling station infrastructure.

Skeptics argue the conversion of energy into pressurized hydrogen is an unnecessary and inefficient step as the pure electric car simply plugs into the grid for its power. Further it is argued the tremendous cost of building the needed infrastructure isn’t justifiable.

Nonetheless GM continues to work to refine the technology and considers fuel cells the final step in its electrification strategy, even as it readies the Volt’s launch.

Last September GM unveiled a new production-intent fuel cell system that fits in the same size space as a traditional 4 cylinder engine. They claim the new generation fuel cell stack and system is half the size, 220 pounds lighter, and uses 1/3 the platinum as the fuel cells in the current Project Driveway fleet.

On Tuesday they announced that the new systems are already operational and undergoing testing.

“Our learning from Project Driveway has been tremendous and these vehicles have been very important to our program,” said Charles Freese, executive director of GM’s Global Fuel Cell Program.

“The 30 months we committed to the demonstration are winding down, but we will keep upgrades of these vehicles running and will continue learning from them while we focus efforts on the production-intent program for 2015,” he said. “We will continue to use the Project Driveway fleet strategically to advance fuel cell technology, hydrogen infrastructure, and GM’s vehicle electrification goals.”

GM has not announced what if any vehicle the tests are being conducted in, nor its exact 2015 commercialization plans.

GM spokesperson Alan Adler told GM-Volt, “the production intent system is not an extended range Voltec system.”

In 2007 GM showed a variant of the Volt concept in which the gas range extender was replaced with a fuel cell system.

“We are not abandoning the fuel-cell technology,” Freese told Bloomberg. “Through the worst years in this company’s history we maintained the program and maintained the forward progress.”

Freese also told Bloomberg “invested over $1.6 billion in fuel cells. We didn’t do it because people were talking about the technology. We did it because we think it’s one of the right elements to have.”

Lamenting the lack of government-funded infrastructure development Freese added “we have anything but consistent policy in this country.”

Source (GM) and (Bloomberg)

For what seems like forever, hydrogen fuel-cell technology has been a shimmering mirage dancing on the distant horizon of the auto-tech desert. No matter how long we keep trudging, how many reams of press-releases we wade through, nothing definite ever seems to happen to bring it any closer. Until now?

Honda Motor Co. has announced the development of it’s latest (fourth generation), compact, solar-powered, home refueling station for the hydrogen fuel FCX Clarity (200 of which are being leased in a California pilot project). With a compact 6-kilowatt solar panel array for power, the station contains a revolutionary high-pressure electrolyzer that can deliver 0.5 KG of extremely pure, pressurized hydrogen gas to the car for every 8 hours of sunlight. Why is this significant?

Although every major automaker has a fuel-cell research program, with GM in particular proclaiming that hydrogen (rather than advances in batteries) is the basis of it’s long term energy strategy, there are several obvious barriers to the success of the technology:

* Hydrogen is actually an energy storage medium rather than a fuel in the petroleum sense (i.e. all usable hydrogen fuel must be produced by electrolysis or reformation, which consume electricity).
* an entire hydrogen refueling infrastructure would need to be built, across the U.S. and around the world.
* vehicle fuel cells remain incredibly expensive to produce.

Since before 2000, billions of dollars have been pouring into vehicle fuel-cell research, but if any practical developments in these three areas have occurred they’ve been kept remarkably quiet. Critics like Doug Korthoff of LiveOilFree accuse automakers (and oil companies) of having used fuel-cell technology as a red-herring to distract lawmakers from requiring battery electric vehicles. Even among those critics who don’t suspect bad faith, many point out that the first barrier is not so much a challenge we can hope to overcome as it is inescapable physics. In other words, the whole proposition may simply not make much sense, particularly if we see competing improvements in battery technology.

But here is where the potential significance of the home refueling station becomes apparent. With one relatively small solar panel and some plumbing that could easily fit on a garage wall, the Honda home station provides enough purified, high-pressure hydrogen from a single day’s sunlight (0.5 KG) to power the car for one standard commute for most drivers.

Voila! Both the first and second obstacles appear to have been dealt a serious blow! It would seem that with this equipment, both the “problem” of where to get the energy to create hydrogen, and the crushing economics of building all the refueling infrastructure necessary to get the system on the road, have been significantly reduced. Of course hydrogen filling stations would still be required, but early-adopters should be a lot more willing to buy a vehicle without waiting for a filling-station network that blankets the earth, if they know that at least they can fill their cars at home. And conceptually, this system works even better if it’s paired with a EREV such as the GM-Volt, with the fuel-cell taking the place of the existing range extender. Days might pass before the vehicle actually consumes any hydrogen, days in which the home system is gradually topping off the tank. Filling station construction could, initially at least, be concentrated on the highways.

Of course, all this may not be quite as wonderful as it sounds (what ever is?). Omitted in the Honda press release and in many of the press accounts is the fact that the electrolyzer requires natural gas as a raw material to generate hydrogen. So the solar panels are not simply providing 30 miles/day of travel directly from the sun, they are in effect converting one fuel to another, albeit a tremendously abundant, environmentally friendly fuel. How much energy is coming from each source, and at what efficiency is of course proprietary information that is not available. We can hope that the technology will ultimately be adapted to water electrolysis, but who knows? And none of this speaks to the third barrier, the current exorbitantly high cost of vehicle fuel cells.

Nevertheless, those of us who until now have been skeptical of the coming “hydrogen economy” can look at this development and say that if it’s not exactly the light at the end of the tunnel, at least it’s starting to look like there really is a tunnel, and not just a black arch painted on the side of a mountain by a lunatic coyote.

Sources: (Cartech, New York Times, HondaNews)

Jon Vandervelde is a designer, writer, and robot combat promoter, with a love for all things mechanical.

General Motors has been working on hydrogen fuel cell technology for a long time, and over a billion in research dollars have been spent on it.

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)

Hydrogen powered vehicles is a topic that tends to bring out debate. Before the recent explosion of interest in battery electric cars, talk of a hydrogen superhighway and fuel cells cars being the next big step were all the rage.

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: