GM Partners With Honda to Develop Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles
GM Fuel Cell Car
When it comes to innovation, General Motors has tried hard to keep up with the times: it recently purchased Cruise Automation to help with developing its own driverless technology, it is expanding the reach of its OnStar in-vehicle tech, its current plug-in hybrid is winning all kinds of awards, and it is well on the way to delivering the new 2017 Bolt, an affordable long-range battery-powered EV.
One thing that GM hasn’t released, though, is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. According to GM’s Charlie Freese (Executive Director of Global Fuel-Cell Activities), this is basically because fuel cell technology is advancing so quickly that by the time GM got one fuel cell car on the market, it would already be obsolete.
GM doesn’t want to give up on FCEVs, though—when Freese made his remarks back in February, GM had taken out more fuel-cell patents since 2002 than any other automaker.
So, you have all of this research and development, but not the ability to produce a fuel-cell car of your own in a timely manner—what do you do?
Well, if you are GM, you partner up with Honda. Honda is currently in the process of starting sales of its Clarity Fuel Cell sedan in Japan, with the highest range among zero-emissions vehicles at 466 miles, and plans to bring the Clarity to California and Europe before the end of the year.
By working together, the two companies aim to lower the cost of producing fuel cell cars to the same level as hybrids over the course of the next nine years. Hopefully for these automakers, the largest obstacle to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles—sparse refueling infrastructure—will be solved (especially since Toyota and Hyundai are also pushing for the EV of the future to get its power from hydrogen).
News Source: Bloomberg
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