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.

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Click the cutaway for high-res images of the HydroGen4

The General Motors HydrogGen4 will be making its public debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show next week prior to being the European representative in Project Driveway. Project Driveway is the largest fuel cell vehicle field test in the world to date and it will involve GM putting vehicles into the hands of regular customers to drive. The HydroGen4 is a re-badged version of the Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell that was shown in the US in prototype form last fall.

Project Driveway will launch in the US this fall and total of 100 Equinoxes will be included in the fleet. Ten of the HydroGen4 models will be made available for testing in partnership with the Clean Energy Partnership in Berlin, Germany. The name comes from the fact that the vehicle is powered by the fourth generation of GM's fuel cell technology. This is a follow-up to the Opel Zafira based HydroGen3 and it uses compressed hydrogen gas pressurized to 10,000 PSI.

[Source: General Motors]