Fuel Cell Chevy Equinox Reach "Important Millstone"

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

I mean, milestone. I mean, it would be petty and vindictive of me to suggest that Chevrolet’s Project Driveway program was/is an enormous waste of GM’s precious development money. If we are to have a hydrogen economy– and why wouldn’t we (other than the cost of rebuilding a trillion dollar-plus infrastructure from the ground up)– we’re going to need fuel cell vehicles to, uh, get around. So you can’t help but applaud the fact GM now has more than 100 hydrogen fuel cell Chevy Equinox on the road, which have logged a combined total of 500k miles. “The vehicles are performing very well and we are learning a great deal about fuel cell robustness and how to make this program work for real customers,” Marybeth Stanek, GM’s director of fuel cell commercialization, opines [via press release]. “The amount of data we’ve collected over the past year is very valuable to us, and gives us insight into this important automotive technology.” Yes, yes. What exactly have we learned? *crickets chirping* Hey! Jay Leno has one! Been driving it since April. Or, you know, parking it in one of his aircraft hangers.

Robert Farago
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  • Alex L. Dykes Alex L. Dykes on Dec 26, 2008

    I got the chance to put a few miles on one of these while attending the LA Auto Show in November. I was quite surprised how "normal" it felt in comparison to early hybrids and 100% electric vehicles I have driven. Now, if that same drivetrain was available in a Caddy CTS and priced around 40K, I might buy one. Sadly however the components are too big for anything buy limited CUV use at the moment. Some interesting things to note: The people that have the Equinox don't pay for their hydrogen. GM does. Why? GM claimed that they have not figured out a way to bill for the hydrogen. Bull S---t. GM Doesn't want anyone to know how much it really costs. The Shell station selling Hydrogen isn't providing it out of the goodness of their hearts, they are just billing GM for the cost. As an aside, fuel cell or combustion hydrogen engine, Hydrogen is an excellent alternative fuel with just one little problem: the US power plants are far from clean. Unless we hop on nuclear power in a big way, there's no way we're going to be able to split enough water into hydrogen/oxygen to fuel any sort of major demand.

  • Tcwarnke Tcwarnke on Dec 26, 2008

    @BMW325I: Why do you have no trust in GM/Ford/Chrysler for alt. fuel vehicles, but you do trust Honda? Your opinion of Honda seems to be based on perception more so than reality. IMO, GM having 100 vehicles on the roads for a year with a combined 500K miles as a major accomplishment. How many Honda FCX Clarity's have been "leased" so far? (planned worldwide production of 200 units over 3 years)

  • Puppybite Puppybite on Dec 26, 2008

    From my research a hydrogen vehicle is not the way to go. The energy (electricity) that is required to extract Hydrogen is 3 times less efficient than if electricity is directly stored in vehicles. A battery electric car. BEVs are already possible as proved by the Toyota RAV4 EV. Interestingly, the battery used in the 10 yr old RAV4 EV is not available since 2003 and is confined and held captive by a patent....by an oil company. Just Google the RAV4 NiMH battery to learn the details on this sad tale. There is hope, though, because china is now producing large format Lithium cells that may prove to be an ideal fit into an EV using a brand new safe nonexplosive LiFePO4 chemistry, so safe you can drive a nail into the battery w/o a fire as would have happened with past Lithium chemistry. China builds a 200 AH, 3.7V cell, so a battery pack can be made from just one series string of about 100 cells as opposed to the battery pack in the Tesla consisting of 6000 series parallel flashlight sized cells. The 200 AH large format cell still costs about $400 so we need to wait for mass production to bring the costs down, while hoping an oil company does not somehow interfere with this process, which seems unlikely given that the batteries are maturing in China, possibly immune to interference from interests in the West.

  • Dutchchris Dutchchris on Dec 27, 2008

    The main thing one needs to understand in the whole hydrogen verses battery-electric vehicles is that 65% of the energy is wasted in the hydrogen cycle of generation, distribution, transformation in electricity in the fuelcell, whereas BEV's are 90% efficient from battery to motor. So even if all the problems with hydrogen were solved (prohibitive cost of fuelcells, durability of fuel cells, generation, distribution,storage of hydrogen, range)society would still end up with a system that's as inefficient as the old fashioned ICE system. Of course carmakers are well aware of the problems but from their viewpoint they are actually advantages. It means they can do their beloved ICE vehicles for decades to come, all the while protecting their green image by pointing towards their (often tax money funded) hydrogen programms. Very useful if you need a bailout too. BMW has been doing it for decades, which makes sense for a car maker which competitive edge depends heavily on it's advanced ICE technology. Honda is a big fan of hydrogen for the same reason.

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