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GM considering fuel cell uses beyond automobiles
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USA: March 19, 2001
HONEOYE FALLS, N.Y. - General Motors Corp., which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on research into fuel cells to power future cars and trucks, is seriously considering using the technology outside the automotive industry, company officials said.
Fuel cells use an electrochemical process to create electricity by mixing hydrogen and oxygen, with distilled water as the only byproduct, avoiding the greenhouse gases and smog that other power sources emit.
Fuel cells are expected to power everything from homes and businesses to cars and laptop computers in the future.
The auto industry, under pressure from environmentalists and regulatory authorities to improve fuel economy and reduce pollution, sees fuel cells as the answer to their problems.
"We've been given the mandate to take the automobile out of the environmental debate," said Byron McCormick, co-director of GM's 80,000 square-foot (7,430-sq-metre) Global Alternative Propulsion Center located here outside Rochester, N.Y..
GM, which has among the largest research and development budgets of any company around the globe, has 170 people working on fuel cell research at the upstate New York center. The program generates more than a dozen patents a month. Hundreds more people are working on fuel cell research in Germany and Michigan. The automaker is also collaborating with rival Toyota Motor Corp. and oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. on fuel cell research.
When asked if GM, which has a history of creating new businesses, will use its research to become involved in fuel cells beyond the automotive industry, McCormick said: "Stay tuned. We're seriously considering it."
McCormick and other GM officials declined to elaborate, but made it clear there is interest in using fuel cells for other applications.
An Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based research company called Allied Business Intelligence Inc. on Wednesday forecast that global stationary fuel cell electricity generating capacity would jump to over 15,000 megawatts in 2010 from just 75 MW this year.
FUEL CELL CARS IN DEALERSHIPS LATER THIS DECADE
In the meantime, GM is focusing its efforts on creating affordable fuel cells which are powerful and small enough to fit in cars and trucks. GM expects to offer its first fuel cell vehicle for sale to the retail public by the end of the decade.
GM has set a goal of becoming the first automaker to sell one million fuel cell vehicles rather than being the first to market and having to subsidize the cost of the vehicles, McCormick said.
"From our senior management, we were told not to worry about being the first in the showroom. We were challenged with being the first company to sell a million fuel cell vehicles," McCormick said.
GM was the first automaker to mass market an electric vehicle - the EV1 in 1996. But following three years of dismal demand, due to the EV1's limited range and lengthy recharging period, GM pulled the plug on the program in 1999 after losing money from subsidizing the cost of leasing the vehicles.
FROM LABORATORIES TO DEALER SHOWROOMS
Barring a breakthrough in battery technology, many in the auto industry agrees that fuel cells offer much more promise than pure electric vehicles.
"This is no longer a science project," McCormick said. "The fuel cell is getting to be real."
Because scientists are still working on a way to store hydrogen safely and efficiently, the first fuel cells to reach the market will likely use a reformer to convert fuels such as gasoline or methanol to hydrogen. These fuels create greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide when used to create hydrogen for a fuel cell, but in far smaller amounts than a traditional internal combustion engine.
GM has developed a gasoline fuel cell nearly twice as efficient as an gas-burning internal combustion engine, and which emits half as much carbon dioxide and only trace amounts of carbon monoxide.
GM will demonstrate the feasibility of the so-called "Gen III" fuel cell in a Chevrolet S-10 compact pickup truck early next year.
Key to making fuel cells economically viable is cutting the quantity of precious metals used in both the fuel cell stack, where hydrogen is converted into electricity, and the fuel reformer, where hydrogen is created from a fuel such as gasoline.
GM has reduced by a factor of 10 the amount of precious metals such as platinum used in fuel cells in the past three years to 70 grams. However, that is still two to seven times the quantity of such metals found in catalytic converters used on current car exhaust systems to remove pollutants, McCormick said. Unlike catalytic converters, fuel cells do not use palladium, among the most expensive precious metals.
Story by Michael Ellis
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