Assessing GM's Fuel Cell Strategy - 10/11/06

GM recently announced that planned to allocate 100 fuel cell powered vehicles to customers and to produce home-based hydrogen refueling stations.  Some people believe that this is a mistake.  They believe that powering these electric vehicles would be inefficient and expensive. 

Hydrogen fuel is manufactured from fossil fuels or water.  These are both energy-consuming processes.  “Once produced, the gas must be compressed or liquefied for distribution, and this process and the distribution itself take yet more energy.  By the time the hydrogen has been delivered to the fuel cell for conversion to electricity, then, a significant amount of energy has been lost to these processes.”

An alternative to the fuel cell powered vehicles would be a plug in hybrid.  Toyota is in the process of producing these vehicles right now.  Conversion kits will be available for the ordinary hybrids.  The plugs in hybrids combine an electric motor that is powered by batteries along with a conventional gasoline or diesel powered engine.  They do rely on the electric motor more than the hybrids of today.  This does not stop the use of gasoline but reduces it greatly.  The controversy is that plugging a hybrid car in is more energy efficient by three or four times compared to the intermediate steps vital to produce hydrogen fuel from water. 

GM is stating that this is only an interim solution.  It is highly complicated due to the fact of battery operated vehicles would need charging.  Consumers are not interested into waiting for the vehicle to recharge and also the performance of the electric vehicle is still not comparable to a gasoline vehicle.

They do not believe that fuel cell car nor will plug in hybrids make us independent from fossil fuels.  Hydrogen is said to be the last option.

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