Click on the Equinox Fuel Cell for a high res gallery

In the fall of 2006, General Motors announced plans to launch the largest ever field test of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles with Project Driveway. The intent was to build over 100 fuel cell-powered Chevrolet Equinoxes and provide them to regular drivers to use for a period of time in real world conditions so that the company could gather data about the vehicles perform. Everything in the article below applies equally to the Equinox fuel cell and the HydroGen4 which is the re-badged version for Europe. Only the name is different.

Having significant numbers of regular customers drive your vehicles is very different from having engineers drive them. Most importantly, they will tend to see a much wider variation of both road and driver input conditions than you will ever see on a proving ground. When a vehicle is being developed usually at most only a few dozen people responsible for each of the systems, like power-train, brakes, chassis, body, etc., will ever spend any significant amount of time driving them. Those engineers tend to focus on what they know to be the likely problem areas and get those fixed.

Continue reading after the jump

click on the image for a high-res gallery of the fuel cell E-Flex platform

In Shanghai this month, as you probably know, GM unveiled the fuel cell version of the E-Flex platform. It's also not recent news that GM wants to have 100-plus hydrogen fuel cell Equinox vehicles out for real world testing soon. And, of course, GM said in February they want to have a production version of the hydrogen-powered Sequel for sale by 2010 (in limited quantaties).

Where does all this lead us? Some would say it's likely to lead us down the road to the questionable benefits of a hydrogen economy. But from a GM-centric perspective, it's likely to lead us to a mass-produced GM hydrogen car in 2012. At least, that's what Motor Trend heard when they spoke with GM's Larry Burns (AutoblogGreen spoke with Burns in March, and you can hear the interview in our second podcast).

Burns told Motor Trend's Todd Lassa about the hydrogen future for GM, and pointed out this bit of information on how GM is looking at the hydrogen future for the rest of us:

"We did that same calculation [how many hydrogen stations would they need] for the 100 largest cities in the U.S. ... and we connected all the cities with stations on the freeway with stations every 25 miles, and that added up to 12,000 stations. Out of 170,000 total in the United States. Even if every station cost $1 million for hydrogen, that's $12 billion. The Alaskan Pipeline today would cost $25 billion. So for half the cost of the Alaskan Pipeline, you could have stations for 70 percent of the population." (See the DOE's hydrogen predictions here)

With fuel station problems partially solved for $12 billion, Burns said GM sees production engineering for high-tech, low- or no-emissions vehicles being the same as for any conventional car or truck in three to four years.

You can read the whole thing here.



[Source: Todd Lassa / Motor Trend]

GM might be relaxing a bit on their previously announced plan (see links below) to mass-produce hydrogen cars in 2010. Just Auto reported yesterday that GM will now decide in 2010 whether this mass production is a good idea. Granted, GM's never said they'd have hydrogen cars on dealer lots across the country (just in hydrogen-friendly places like California), but Just Auto's article (subs req'd) makes the General out to be a lot more relaxed about the introduction of the production Sequel (or whatever).

Lars Peter Thiesen, manager of GM Europe's fuel cell deployment strategy, speaking at a media briefing at GM's test track near Frankfort, Germany, told Just Auto that GM is waiting to hit two targets (a 5,500 hour fuel cell and getting the cost of fuel cell power to about $50 per kilowatt (Thiesen said that small petrol engines cost $30 per kilowatt and a big, sophisticated engine costs $70 per kilowatt. Just Auto never quotes Thiesen saying that 2010 is the official decision date, but that's what their headline says, so don't hold GM to this statement.

Related:

• GM plans to produce hydrogen fuel car by 2010
• GM to produce Sequel fuel cell vehicle by 2010

[Source: Just Auto (subs req'd)]

General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner will be making a speech this Wednesday at the Los Angeles auto show and is expected to make some announcements about upcoming alternative fuel vehicles the company is working on. Apparently Wagoner isn't expected to discuss details or unveil actual vehicles, but will instead outline GM's plans and strategy for rolling out new hybrids, electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles over the next few years. The series hybrid that they are developing along with the new parallel hybrids coming in 2008 will probably be the highlights. Product details and actual vehicle unveilings are still likely to come in January at the Detroit auto show. This speech is mostly to try and deflect some of the criticism GM got in the wake of the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" for their actions with the EV1 electric car.

[Source: The AutoChannel]

GM's hydrogen-powered HyWire is not your typical car. All controls are in the steering "wheel" and the chassis is easily changeable. It's only a concept car, but the BBC Prime show Top Gear took the only HyWire in existence for a bit of a test drive recently. The test drive is kind of cool to watch (which you can do over on YouTube). Top Gear correspondent James May takes the car out about a minute into the video (the first minute is dedicated to the Mazda RX 8). The HyWire is not a new concept (it was introduced to the public a few years ago. Here's a write up from the 2002 Paris Motor Show.), but it's cool to see one driving around. Of course, no mention of hydrogen cars would be complete without the standard "the hydrogen economy is 15-20 years away" disclaimer, which May admits at the end of the clip. Sigh.

[Source: BBC Prime via Top Gear. Hat tip to Martijn]