No fuelin’

Before a cheering crowd led by a vanguard of General Motors publicists, the automotive industry”™s sustainable future made an appearance in Westchester County last week. Like some gas guzzlers also navigating rush-hour traffic across the Tappan Zee Bridge, the future was late getting here.
Better late than never, in the view of GM executives, whose company to date has invested about $50 billion in research and development of fuel cell technology. Nearly two hours behind schedule, two Chevrolet Sequel vehicles, electrically powered by hydrogen fuel cells emitting nothing but water vapor, made automotive history when they crossed the finish line Tuesday at historic Lyndhurst Castle in Tarrytown. The aluminum-bodied, crossover sport utility vehicles with skateboard-shaped chassises had set out nearly nine hours earlier from the GM Fuel Cell Activities Center in Honeoye Falls, near Rochester.
They were the first fuel cell vehicles to drive 300 miles on public roads without refueling, GM officials said. A company spokesman said the longest previously registered drive was 270 miles.
“It was a nail-biter for a while,” said one GM employee in the fleet of trucks, cars and tractor-trailers that accompanied the Sequels on their historic journey across the state”™s Southern Tier, through the Catskills and into the lower Hudson Valley.
“We weren”™t sure we”™d make 300,” said a relieved GM engineer.
The 300-mile distance was hailed by GM”™s planning and engineering team as “an important milestone” to reach on the company”™s roughly 40-year drive to produce fuel cell vehicles for the commercial market. That is the range “expected by today”™s consumers,” said Lawrence Burns, GM vice president for research and development and strategic planning, who was behind the electrically wired steering wheel when the first Sequel crossed the finish line.
Raising glasses of Perrier water with Christopher Borroni-Bird, the chief engineer behind GM”™s line of fuel cell vehicles in its “Reinvention of the Automobile” program, Burns toasted “the future of the planet, the future of cell technology and of course the future of our company.”
The vehicles”™ compressed hydrogen fuel was produced with water and electricity from the Niagara Falls hydropower project, GM officials said.
“I think today”™s drive was very significant,” said Borroni-Bird, a 42-year-old, Cambridge University-trained native of Liverpool, England, “because nobody was able to
demonstrate before a vehicle that could go 300 miles without producing pollution.
“Every zero-emission vehicle has always had limited range, which has limited attraction” for consumers.
“In fact, we beat it,” the engineer said of the 300-mile goal. The Sequel”™s fuel tank, which stores 8 kilograms of hydrogen, the energy equivalent of 8 gallons of gasoline, still had a reserve at the finish line. “We think we can get 350 miles,” said Borroni-Bird, compared with about 160 miles for a like-sized gas-fueled vehicle.
“Only 4 percent of the world owns an automobile,” said Burns. But GM cannot generate business growth in that untapped global market without first developing vehicles powered by renewable resources, he said. “We need to find technological solutions so that all people can enjoy the freedom of owning an automobile,” he said.
“Sustainable technology ”“ that”™s what this milestone is all about,” Burns said. “This vehicle represents the DNA of the new automotive technology.”
Burns said the Chevrolet Sequel will be the first fuel cell car that GM introduces on the commercial market. “We absolutely are intending to begin commercialization early the next decade,” he said.
“Chevrolet is our highest-volume brand. These technologies won”™t make a difference until you can sell them at mass volume. You”™ve got to get to a solution that people can afford. Our target is that these cars be no more costly than today”™s gasoline-engine cars.”
Burns said GM will start commercial production of the Sequel in 2011 or 2012. “We feel we need to get to a scale of a million a year. We think at a million a year, we can have scale of economy with our suppliers and be competitive with the internal combustion engine.”
“I see a very exciting market in China,” which has a largely undeveloped auto manufacturing system, Burns said. “If I were going to prioritize, I”™d look at the U.S.; I”™d look at China.”
To gauge American consumers”™ receptiveness to its fuel cell vehicles, GM this year and next will produce 100 Chevrolet Equinox SUVs, which have an operating range of 230 to 250 miles, Burns said. In a market test called “Project Driveway,” the vehicles will be leased to customers in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and here in the metropolitan New York area.
Some of those vehicles likely will be driven by residents of Westchester, where GM operated an assembly plant at Sleepy Hollow that closed in 1996.
The city of White Plains last week began construction of a hydrogen refueling station at its public works garage on South Kensico Avenue, said Commissioner of Public Works Joseph J. Nicoletti Jr., who attended the Lyndhurst event. The city”™s project partner, Shell Hydrogen, will pay to install the approximately $500,000 station. The city will receive $700,000 in grants from the New York State Energy Research Development Authority and New York Power Authority to purchase five vehicles converted for hydrogen fuel use.
Shell also is a partner with GM in Project Driveway. Half of the hydrogen gas storage and production capacities at the city fueling station will used for that consumer testing program, Nicoletti said.