Before a cheering crowd led by a vanguard
of General Motors publicists, the automotive industry’s
sustainable future made an appearance in Westchester
County last week. Like some gas guzzlers also navigating
rush-hour traffic across the Tappan Zee Bridge,
the future was late getting here.
Better late than never, in the view of
GM executives, whose company to date has invested
about $50 billion in research and development of
fuel cell technology. Nearly two hours behind schedule,
two Chevrolet Sequel vehicles, electrically powered
by hydrogen fuel cells emitting nothing but water
vapor, made automotive history when they crossed
the finish line Tuesday at historic Lyndhurst Castle
in Tarrytown. The aluminum-bodied, crossover sport
utility vehicles with skateboard-shaped chassises
had set out nearly nine hours earlier from the GM
Fuel Cell Activities Center in Honeoye Falls, near
Rochester.
They were the first fuel cell vehicles
to drive 300 miles on public roads without refueling,
GM officials said. A company spokesman said the
longest previously registered drive was 270 miles.
“It was a nail-biter for a while,” said
one GM employee in the fleet of trucks, cars and
tractor-trailers that accompanied the Sequels on
their historic journey across the state’s Southern
Tier, through the Catskills and into the lower Hudson
Valley.
“We weren’t sure we’d make 300,” said a
relieved GM engineer.
The 300-mile distance was hailed by GM’s
planning and engineering team as “an important milestone”
to reach on the company’s roughly 40-year drive
to produce fuel cell vehicles for the commercial
market. That is the range “expected by today’s consumers,”
said Lawrence Burns, GM vice president for research
and development and strategic planning, who was
behind the electrically wired steering wheel when
the first Sequel crossed the finish line.
Raising glasses of Perrier water with Christopher
Borroni-Bird, the chief engineer behind GM’s line
of fuel cell vehicles in its “Reinvention of the
Automobile” program, Burns toasted “the future of
the planet, the future of cell technology and of
course the future of our company.”
The vehicles’ compressed hydrogen fuel
was produced with water and electricity from the
Niagara Falls hydropower project, GM officials said.
“I think today’s drive was very significant,”
said Borroni-Bird, a 42-year-old, Cambridge University-trained
native of Liverpool, England, “because nobody was
able todemonstrate before a vehicle that could
go 300 miles without producing pollution.
“Every zero-emission vehicle has always
had limited range, which has limited attraction”
for consumers.
“In fact, we beat it,” the engineer said
of the 300-mile goal. The Sequel’s fuel tank, which
stores 8 kilograms of hydrogen, the energy equivalent
of 8 gallons of gasoline, still had a reserve at
the finish line. “We think we can get 350 miles,”
said Borroni-Bird, compared with about 160 miles
for a like-sized gas-fueled vehicle.
“Only 4 percent of the world owns an automobile,”
said Burns. But GM cannot generate business growth
in that untapped global market without first developing
vehicles powered by renewable resources, he said.
“We need to find technological solutions so that
all people can enjoy the freedom of owning an automobile,”
he said.
“Sustainable technology that’s what this
milestone is all about,” Burns said. “This vehicle
represents the DNA of the new automotive technology.”
Burns said the Chevrolet Sequel will be
the first fuel cell car that GM introduces on the
commercial market. “We absolutely are intending
to begin commercialization early the next decade,”
he said.
“Chevrolet is our highest-volume brand.
These technologies won’t make a difference until
you can sell them at mass volume. You’ve got to
get to a solution that people can afford. Our target
is that these cars be no more costly than today’s
gasoline-engine cars.”
Burns said GM will start commercial production
of the Sequel in 2011 or 2012. “We feel we need
to get to a scale of a million a year. We think
at a million a year, we can have scale of economy
with our suppliers and be competitive with the internal
combustion engine.”
“I see a very exciting market in China,”
which has a largely undeveloped auto manufacturing
system, Burns said. “If I were going to prioritize,
I’d look at the U.S.; I’d look at China.”
To gauge American consumers’ receptiveness
to its fuel cell vehicles, GM this year and next
will produce 100 Chevrolet Equinox SUVs, which have
an operating range of 230 to 250 miles, Burns said.
In a market test called “Project Driveway,” the
vehicles will be leased to customers in Los Angeles,
Washington, D.C., and here in the metropolitan New
York area.
Some of those vehicles likely will be driven
by residents of Westchester, where GM operated an
assembly plant at Sleepy Hollow that closed in 1996.
The city of White Plains last week began
construction of a hydrogen refueling station at
its public works garage on South Kensico Avenue,
said Commissioner of Public Works Joseph J. Nicoletti
Jr., who attended the Lyndhurst event. The city’s
project partner, Shell Hydrogen, will pay to install
the approximately $500,000 station. The city will
receive $700,000 in grants from the New York State
Energy Research Development Authority and New York
Power Authority to purchase five vehicles converted
for hydrogen fuel use.
Shell also is a partner with GM in Project
Driveway. Half of the hydrogen gas storage and production
capacities at the city fueling station will used
for that consumer testing program, Nicoletti said.
