As part of the GM Centennial celebration today, the General hosted an hour-long panel discussion that purported to look ahead 100 years and discover "Future of Transportation," according to my handy-dandy GM event schedule. The panel certainly was an hour long and did feature all of the listed guests, but the discussion rarely ranged past the 20-years-in-the-future timeframe. Still, if you didn't know anything about how the U.S. and the major automakers are going to shift away from gasoline-powered vehicles, it was a good condensation of the current state of affairs into 60 minutes.

Hosted by Joel Makower, co-founder and executive editor of Greener World Media, Inc., the panel also included: John Casesa, managing partner of Casesa Shapiro; GM VP Larry Burns; Don Hillebrand, director of transportation research at Argonne National Laboratory, "Who Killed The Electric Car?" director Chris Paine; and Mark Duvall, program manager of EPRI. The panelists took questions from the audience and from the online community (as the event was streamed live at GM Next). Click past the jump to see what the discussion was all about.

When Larry Burns, GM's vice president of R&D and planning, spoke at the opening session of the AFVI expo yesterday morning, he stayed on target to bring GM's message to the conference. Before he stepped onto the stage, we had a chance to sit down with him and ask a few question

One thing I wanted to follow up with him about was his recent speech to the Hydrogen Fuel Association where he called for more government support for a hydrogen refueling infrastructure. Burns told me that in the six or so weeks since that speech, he's heard a bit of discussion and seen some movement on this issue. There's nothing to announce, but it seems there are still lots of people in government who listen to what GM wants. As for the customer side of the equation, Burns said that buyers will get excited about hydrogen cars once they have the chance to take a ride or a drive in a fuel cell car. Just take a look at Project Driveway, he said. We also talked about the 1970s Oil Shocks and the problem of reduced oil supply (you can't think of it in cyclical fashion; you need to think long-term, he said). Listen for yourself (12 min)

Amy Myers Jaffe

Another year, another AFVI convention. At last year's show, which took place in Anaheim, California, we learned about Connaught's Type-D Hybrid, the Naro concept vehicle, and took a Smart Brabus diesel for a quick spin. The 2008 Alternative Fuels & Vehicles National Conference and Expo officially kicked off in Las Vegas this morning. Annalloyd Thomason, AFVI's executive director, gave the opening remarks and introduced the four people who would set the stage for the week. The speakers lined up for the opening session were not what I would consider the usual suspects for an industry conference like this; they were just a little bit more aware of issues outside the technical focus that sometimes defines these sorts of events.

Amy Myers Jaffe, for example, put the conference's topic into a global perspective. Myers Jaffe wears a lot of hats, but the two most pertinent for the AFVI crowd were her positions as associate director of the Rice University energy program and a strategic adviser to the American Automobile Association. Her speech focused on political instability and conflicts around the world and the challenges they bring to energy use. The tight oil market means that what she called small events (e.g., oil workers who go on strike in Nigeria - something that happened in the 1980s with out a real ripple) can now have a big, big effect on the world market. The new definition of energy security means having options in all of our energy sectors, transportation included, she said. Listen to her 15-minute keynote address:



Much more after the jump.

A couple of weeks ago, GM VP for Research and Development Larry Burns spoke to the National Hydrogen Association. The focus of his talk was to encourage energy companies to get moving with deploying hydrogen filling stations to support a fleet fuel cell vehicles. GM, Toyota and Honda were all at the NHA conference and the three - along with Daimler - have all indicated their confidence in the efficiency, effectiveness, and durability of fuel cell technology. Burns acknowledged it will take several generations of the technology with increased production volumes to get to a point where it is as affordable as today's powertrains. However, it's difficult for automakers to justify building cars if energy companies won't open retail filling stations. In order to make its Project Driveway program happen, GM had to purchase hydrogen fueling systems to support the 100 Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicles. Burns called on the industry to roll out 40 stations within the three counties of Los Angeles and along corridors to Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and Las Vegas and San Diego. Such an implementation would put hydrogen with convenient reach of the entire population of the the Los Angeles area. Burns would like to see this happen before the next wave of fuel cell vehicles is rolled out in the next few years. You can listen to Burns speech here.

[Source: GMnext.com]

The outgoing President of Shell's U.S. operation has thrown some cold water on the latest GM and Toyota PR offensive for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Shell's John Hofmeister told a Sacramento, Calif., audience Monday at a conference on low-carbon fuels that widespread use of hydrogen as an automotive fuel remains one to three decades out.

GM's Larry Burns recently called on fuel providers (read oil companies) to make a greater effort to roll out hydrogen fueling stations. Hofmeister sees difficulty convincing service station owners to make the investment required to offer a fuel for which there is no near-term prospect of vehicles. The federal government has provided over $1 billion dollars for hydrogen and fuel cells to little practical effect. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pet Hydrogen Highway project, to which he has devoted millions of taxpayer dollars, "is going to be a long, drawn-out process. These infrastructure issues are going to continue getting in the way."

[Source: Edmunds.com]

Toyota published a post on their Open Road Blog today officially supporting statements by GM Vice President Larry Burns. At the recent National Hydrogen Association conference in Sacramento, Burns called on the energy industry to invest more in developing a national hydrogen fueling infrastructure. Burns declared that vehicle fuel cell technology works and manufacturers are ready to move forward with commercialization. Unfortunately, they can't really do that without the ability for customers to fuel their vehicles. While many have focused on the cost of building out a network of hydrogen stations, only a small fraction of the current number of gas stations are needed to support widespread use of hydrogen vehicles. There are 170,000 gas stations in the U.S. right now, but only 12,000 stations would be needed to have a station within two miles of 70 percent of the population. Toyota called out the fact that the oil industry earned $123 billion in profits in 2007 alone. Even an estimate of $24 billion - which is at the high end of projections - would be well within the means of the energy industry to pay for a hydrogen infrastructure and it would still leave them $100 billion to play with before they even count up this year's profits. No doubt hydrogen is not the total solution, but it is one part of it.

[Source: Toyota Open Road Blog]

As we wrote on April Fool's Day (but wasn't a joke), GM's vice president for research & development and planning, Larry Burns, delivered a speech at the National Hydrogen Association conference highlighting his GM's bullish stance on hydrogen cars. Reuters spoke to Burns about his speech and learned of the General's plans to have 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles driving in California between 2012 and 2014. Through Project Driveway, GM already has around 60 fuel cell Equinoxes in SoCal, and Burns told Reuters that "The next logical play for us is to take that up to a car scale of about 1,000," with mainstream acceptance and financial viability of hydrogen cars following in 2017 or 2018. We'll see.

[Source: Reuters]

During a keynote speech at the National Hydrogen Association conference in Sacramento, CA, GM's VP for Research and Development declared automotive fuel cell technology ready. However he said it can't move forward without a supply of hydrogen to feed mass quantities of cars. Between General Motors, Daimler, Toyota, Honda and Ford, automakers have demonstrated that the technology works and is reliable. GM and Honda in particular are working aggressively to create fuel cell designs that can be mass produced at an affordable cost. The latest designs have improved efficiency, durability and greatly reduced requirements for catalyst materials.

At the conference, Burns is stepping up the call for the energy industry and government to start implementing a fuel distribution system. Previous analysis done by General Motors has concluded that supplying upwards of ninety-five percent of the population would only require 12,000 hydrogen stations nationwide. That compares to 170,000 gas stations currently in operation. That number of stations placed at roughly two mile intervals in all the populated areas and twenty-five miles apart on major highways would be sufficient to supply the nation with hydrogen for transportation. The estimated cost of that would $10-15 billion or about 1/3 of ExxonMobil's profits for one recent quarter. Without this investment, the U.S. will get left behind.

[Source: Hydrogen Forecast]

"Reports of my death" the fuel cell might say "have been greatly exaggerated." Market Watch spoke with Larry Burns (see video below the fold), VP Research & Development & Strategic Planning for GM, at the launch of Virgin's fuel cell fleet and he is very bullish on fuel cells. Burns said that while today there are hundreds of fuel cell vehicles on the roads today, there will be thousands by 2012 and then hundreds of thousands or even millions "within our grasp" in the "next decade." A lot of progress was made in the last decade, Burns said, and GM is even talking with energy companies like Shell (remember when they used to be called oil companies?) about the future of fuel cells. Insanely optimistic fuel cell hype is back, baby!

[Source: MarketWatch]

GM's Larry Burns is a pretty well known name around these parts, but for those unfamiliar with the name, he is the Vice President of Research and Development and Strategic Planning for the company. Larry leads all the efforts involving cool new technologies at the Detroit car-maker. While we have focused on powertrain innovations like fuel cells, batteries and HCCI there is a lot of other work going on at GM in other areas such as materials as well. ASM International has decided to give Larry their 2007 Medal for the Advancement of Research particularly for work on shape memory materials. These materials can change their properties when exposed to various stimuli like electrical charges or heat and then return to their original form. The GM press release is after the jump.

[Source: General Motors]