Carmakers Still Commited to Fuel-Cell Vehicles

Hydrogen power for cars has taken some big hits lately, most notably in Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s unilateral decision to kill more than $100 million in annual funding for fuel-cell transportation. But that hasn’t stopped automakers, despite these recessionary times, from sticking to their commercialization timetables.

Peter Hoffmann, who carries the torch with The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Letter, admits that these are tough times for true believers. “My subscriptions have been going down steadily, and it’s because biofuels, electric vehicles [EVs] and plug-in hybrids are getting all the attention in Washington. Thanks to naysayerslike Joe Romm and former CIA Director James Woolsey, hydrogen is off the radar screen.”

But not off the production schedules. Carmakers are saying that, in the past five years, hydrogen cars have actually made faster progress than EVs, but it’s the latter that’s on the fast track. General Motors, which has 110 fuel-cell vehicles in test programs around the country, wants to jump-start the movement in a big way with a major urban commitment. “What we need to have happen is for some city or metropolitan area to step up and say we’ll put 50 to 80 stations in place,” Vice President Larry Burns told the Vancouver Sun. “We’ll locate them intelligently so our citizens are no farther than a couple of miles away from these places. Once we have a commitment like that, I think the auto industry would be capable of targeting its first real, true first-generation vehicles.”

Burns says the company’s Equinox fuel-cell cars have been engineered to commercial standards, but because the programs are so small everything’s still being hand built. He wants 1,000 cars on the road, not 100.

Charles Freese, who succeeds the larger-than-life Byron McCormick as the head of GM’s fuel-cell program, said in an as-yet unpublished interview with Peter Hoffmann, “We will remain on course with the hydrogen fuel-cell program as part of our advanced propulsion technology. What that emphasizes is that there is no single silver bullet…The Chevrolet Volt is the tipping point from mechanical drive to the next step, fuel-cell vehicles. The technologies are synergistic: You can’t think of them as independent programs, all are interactive, resources are shared between hybrids and fuel cells, and we have been doing this for a long time.”

Freese added that GM is fielding “more vehicles than any other company,” has “learned a lot about how this technology behaves, and continues “to make big advances in terms of reliability.”

The tires are hitting the road. According to Fuel Cells 2000, ongoing programs include:

• Major automaker programs will put up to 50,000 cars in California by 2017, even though Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s “hydrogen highway” seems to be moving slowly;
• Daimler is beginning production of its B-Class fuel-cell vehicles, and plans to build tens of thousands in the 2015 to 2017 time frame;
• Toyota spokesman John Hanson told me that the company may speed up its commercialization timetable to get its cars (which achieve as much as 480 miles of range in tests) on the road as early as late 2014;
• Honda’s FCX Clarity, the “World Green Car of the Year,” is being leased in California and Japan.

And, of course, hydrogen cars can be very clean. Despite the Department of Energy defunding, its own recent “well to wheels” analysis shows that fuel-cell vehicles are the best possible option in terms of technologies likely to be available in 2020. Hydrogen from wind is the best option, followed by nuclear power, biomass, coal (with carbon sequestration) and natural gas.