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GM Calls For More Hydrogen Stations; Plans 1,000 Fuel Cell Vehicles in California by 2014
7 April 2008
General Motors called on the energy industry and governments to build more hydrogen fueling stations to help automakers move to volume production of fuel cell-electric vehicles.
That message was delivered last week by Larry Burns, General Motors vice president, research & development and strategic planning, in a keynote address at the National Hydrogen Association’s annual conference in Sacramento, CA.
Burns noted that other automakers are also spending significant amounts on developing fuel cell technology and want to bring fuel cell vehicles to market, but pointed out that parallel investment by the energy industry and governments is urgently required.
Burns’s comments coincided with the release of a new study by General Motors and Shell Hydrogen, which concluded that a hydrogen infrastructure is economically viable and doable.
The automobile industry has reached a critical juncture in our journey to realize the full potential of hydrogen fuel cell-electric vehicles. While we have made impressive progress, we have now reached a point where the energy industry and governments must pick up their pace so we can continue to advance in a timely manner.
It’s no longer a question of ‘can it be done?’ or ‘should it be done?’ We not only should do it. We must do it. It’s now a question of collective will. Do we have the collective resolve to work together to solve the challenges we face rather than handing them off to future generations?
This technology promises to deliver family-sized vehicles that are fun to drive, safe, look great, refuel fast, go far between fill-ups, and are emissions-free and petroleum-free. It also holds promise to do all of this while keeping automobiles affordable to own and operate. And just like electricity, it can be made from a broad range of renewable and sustainable energy pathways. No other technology offers this exciting potential. We have not discovered anything yet to suggest mass volume cannot ultimately be attained.
Burns complimented hydrogen fueling initiatives by FreedomCAR, Shell Hydrogen and Chevron Hydrogen, the California Fuel Cell Partnership, and the California Hydrogen Highway, but called for efforts like these to accelerate.
What is urgently needed is sufficient investment by energy providers to assure auto companies that the required hydrogen infrastructure will be in place when we deploy our next generation of fuel cell-electric vehicles. Clearly, the automobile industry has stepped forward with fuel cell-electric vehicles, and we are doing everything possible to aggressively develop this critically important technology. However, we have reached a stage where we cannot continue to make significant progress on our own. Our customers must have safe and convenient access to affordable hydrogen. This means the energy industry and governments must join the auto industry in our journey to produce and sell fuel cell-electric vehicles in volume numbers.
Burns said in an interview with Reuters that GM plans to have about 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California between 2012 to 2014 to contribute to meeting its share of the state’s new ZEV regulations. Under the recently revised program, California is setting combined target for zero emissions vehicles that can be met with 7,500 mid-range fuel cell vehicles, 12,500 battery electric vehicles, 5,357 extended range vehicles, or combinations of those and other ZEV platforms. (Earlier post.)
California currently has only 25 refueling stations. GM is lobbying for 40 in the Los Angeles area.
April 7, 2008 in Fuel Cells, Hydrogen, Infrastructure | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack (0)
Comments
Posted by: sjc | April 08, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Anne:
At least with locomotives, the weight issue isn't really much of an issue, in fact, increased weight gives a locomotive increased traction, so weight in fact has a few beneifits. The issue would be energy density, which hydrogen has something like 4 times more energy per volume than even lithium-ion batteries, and plus recharging time would be a huge issue. I suppose you could have a "battery car" that you could strap to the back of the locomotive, but I could imagine some serious logistics issues (i.e a cross-country train to get a new battery car would have to decouple from the train and move a new one on, etc) involved with that. But interesting proposal.
Posted by: Dan A | April 08, 2008 at 02:14 PM
Dan and Anne,
I don't know much about trains except for what my friend has told me, who works on them a lot. They are very heavy, as Anne says, but they also have extremely low rolling resistance, far lower than that of cars; that's one of the reasons the cost of moving stuff by train is so low (that and the super long length also reduces the effect of wind resistance). So overall, lower moving resistance. It's not surprising that ultra-caps are very interesting to trains, as a way of storing some of that huge kinetic energy that needs to be reduced when breaking.
With respect to the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells, let me try to drive a another stake in that as well. Assuming plug-ins can be made to work (as they probably can) then hydrogen and particularly hydrogen fuel cells make even less sense. Why? With PHEVs the utility or duty of the fuel-driven engine (or fuel cell) is reduced. Perhaps to as low as 20% of the vehicle's energy sourcing (that's the hope anyway). That means that the efficiency of this source is thus only 20% as important as it was before. Conversely, the cost of the system should be even lower, as you are using it less often. Why have a super-duper efficient engine that you use only 20% of the time? Overall cost efficiency would dictate a less-efficient, less-expensive engine, even accounting for the greater amount of fuel burned. This seems to be yet another thing that GM doesn't seem to understand.
You could make an argument for fuel cells if they were much cheaper than IC engines, or if hydrogen was much cheaper than gasoline. But neither is the case. So instead, the efficiency argument is made, but that doesn't hold water either in a world of PHEVs. Instead, you want a simple system that can produce a large range for low cost (not necessarily including the cost of the fuel.)
Reasonable people could argue against methane, a gaseous fuel on this point. The issue here is how much more a liquid fuel from biomass would cost compared to bio-methane. Jury is out on that one, but not looking really very good, when you consider ethanol.
Posted by: Jim | April 08, 2008 at 03:36 PM
A usable megawatt hour of power would take either 1 standard small 50 jg h2 tank... as in cheap... or 20 metric tons of the best lith batteries...
The typical train ENGINE will need 20 of those and the standard train will need 4 duch units... And thats just one normal train.
Posted by: wintermane | April 08, 2008 at 03:52 PM
Why use H2 or batteries for rail transport when you can simply electrify the rails? Add some stationary flywheels at intervals to help recuperate more of the regen. The technology is already being proven in Europe and Asia.
Posted by: Bob Bastard | April 09, 2008 at 06:42 AM
I like the idea of electrifying part of the rails out west in the U.S. We have vast territory out west and electrifying all of them would be expensive.
The train could run on stored energy until it gets to an electrified section, where it can charge the storage while it runs. Sort of an on the fly "pit stop" for the locomotive.
Posted by: sjc | April 09, 2008 at 12:52 PM
Simple bob the answer is leakage and maintenance. Every foot of powered rail eats power all the time and there are alot of feet of rail. Also our weather kills powerlines like crazy and much of the rail is extremely remote and very nasty. And its cgeaper to build an h2 imfrastructure then it is to build the lines and power plants and everything else.
AND in the meantime the rail companies are converting to ctl fuels.
Posted by: wintermane | April 09, 2008 at 02:27 PM
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There was an article on here for a PEM locomotive project. It sounded like one of those units that they have in switching yards, but it was a proof of concept.
There is an ad for rail freight in the U.S. where they show a hybrid driving on to a freight car. They talk about how the train gets something like 400 mpg hauling the car. Interesting ad.