General Hydrogen Makes First OEM Sale of Fuel-Cell Power Pack
19 May 2006
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| Hydricity-powered fork lift |
General Hydrogen Corporation, a provider of hydrogen fuel-cell power packs as battery replacement technology for electric forklifts and other industrial vehicles, announced the commercial sale of a Hydricity Pack to Cat Lift Trucks of Houston, Texas, to be delivered in July, 2006.
Cat Lift Trucks, a global leader in the material handling industry, will use the pack in a Class 1 battery-electric forklift.
Importantly, this is our first commercial sale to a forklift manufacturer. This, together with our other recent commercial sales and deliveries to end user customers, demonstrates the growing confidence in the economics, performance and attributes of our drop-in technology, which does not require any equipment retrofitting.
—Frank Trotter, President and CEO, General Hydrogen
The Hydricity power packs, built around a Ballard fuel cell, can triple the runtime of battery-electric forklifts to 18 hours with constant voltage output, and can refuel in 3 minutes or less.
In November 2005 Bridgestone/Firestone Tire ordered Hydricity Packs as replacements for conventional lead-acid batteries in material handling vehicles in its Warren County, Tennessee plant. (Earlier post.)
Their on-line store is closed?
Although they do list a portable generator and fuel cylinders.
Posted by: tonychilling | 19 May 2006 at 11:02 PM
too bad honda and toyota have been doing this for months now. though it IS good to see GM trying to catch up. better late than never.
Posted by: lensovet | 22 May 2006 at 11:20 AM
Fork lifts are one of the specialized markets for hydrogen that can live with $3000/kW fuel source. Why? Those forklifts are used in big food distribution centers where they cannot use gasoline, diesel or even propane or alcohols(due to food safety rules) The only alternative before fuel cell was battery. The problem with battery packs was long recharge time and need to swap them from fork lifts.
A lot of time those forklifts are used 24 hours a day. In a 24 hour work day, each fork lift required swap of 3 battery packs. You can imagine all neccessery equipment to charge and swap those battery packs. Compared to batteries, it takes 3 minutes to recharge hydrogen and no heavy battery swaps are necessary.
Honda or Toyota have they development automobiles but those are not in a production yet and are still super expensive. This fork lift, on the other hand, is comercializable or at least close to comercialization. I'm happy to see them succeed in pulling it off.
Posted by: W2 | 23 May 2006 at 06:21 AM
Do you think this system can work in a car? Do you think this system could be a replacement for electric cars? Or do you think this charging system could be made to work on keeping EV batteries charged?
We are a small company in Utah. We build EV's and Hybrids. Do you really believe that this system can work in place of batteries? If so, I would like to build you a car to test your batteries in. The name of our company is Envision Energy Systems. We are working on just about everything GREEN. If we can help please contact me. Rocky Whitham 801-232-0322
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Posted by: Kim Smith | 13 July 2010 at 07:48 PM