Spring Hill Leads the Way for GM’s Hydrogen Cell Program
Photo: GM
When car companies talk about going green, they’re not just talking about the cars they sell to consumers. Large-scale manufacturing facilities use a lot of energy and can generate tons of waste. GM’s Spring Hill Manufacturing facility in Tennessee made just one change, and now it’s being touted as an example for other facilities.
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What changed? Swapping out traditional acid lead batteries for fuel cell batteries powered by hydrogen.
The Daily Herald, a paper out of middle Tennessee, reports that the hydrogen fuel cells came to Spring Hill in December of 2017 when it was retooled to work on a new engine. At first, Gary Hawkins, a Global Supply Chain Floor Lead at the plant, was wary. What would happen if hydrogen spilled? Would it be enough to meet all of the plant’s needs?
Since 2017, Spring Hill has worked through all of the changes to adapt to using hydrogen and seems to be doing quite well. Spring Hill now operates 27 tuggers and 12 forklifts with hydrogen fuel cells. The updates have been so successful that they earned the plant a visit from CEO Mary Barra earlier this year, and other officials from the Detroit office are looking at Spring Hill to see how their processes could be applied to other plants.
Plant officials say that the change has done so much more than just make the plant more environmentally friendly. Since the switch, fleet maintenance costs have dropped about 38 percent. The hydrogen fuel cells can power the tools longer without refueling, which means less work stoppage to swap out batteries or add new fuel.
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The Spring Hill manufacturing facility currently assembles the Cadillac XT5, XT6, GMC Acadia, and Holden Acadia. It also builds key engines, like the 6.2-liter V8 engine for the Chevy Tahoe, GMC Yukon, GMC Yukon XL, and Cadillac Escalade.
Considering GM’s focus on eliminating emissions from consumer products and its own operations, this is great news for them. Hopefully, the hydrogen fuel cells will roll out at more plants soon.
News Source: The Daily Herald and General Motors
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