Report from NHA: Post 3
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008The cars are coming, where’s the hydrogen?
By Bill Mitchell, Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Nuvera Fuel Cells
Through 3 days of keynote addresses and meetings at the National Hydrogen Association meeting (including a ride and drive where we were allowed to put the Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicle and BMW Hydrogen 7-series to the test on a small rally track), one of the overarching themes that started to emerge on the fuel cell vehicle front was: The cars are coming – where is the hydrogen?
On the first day, Paul Brubaker, Administrator of Research and Innovative Technology Administration for the U.S. Department of Transportation challenged all of us with a simple question: Why not? That is, why not make the required investment in hydrogen and fuel cells to move our country away from fossil fuels. In the 1950’s, President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act that resulted in our interstate highway system. In the 1960’s, President Kennedy enabled research to put a man on the moon with the Apollo program. In the words of Mr. Brubaker, both of these programs were expensive at the time, but in retrospect, have forever changed our society for the better. Investment in hydrogen and fuel cells will be viewed similarly in the future.
On the second day, Dr. Mary Nichols, the Chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board discussed a recent decision at CARB that will mandate fuel cell vehicles, battery electric vehicles, and plug-in hybrids. According to CARB, the mandate will ensure that in the 2012 to 2014 timeframe, that a total fleet of 7,500 fuel cell vehicles (5,357 if OEM’s can make the cars travel at least 300 miles on a tank of hydrogen) will be running around the streets. This will be augmented by no less than 58,333 plug-in hybrids. During her talk, she indicated that CARB is still studying how to “mandate” a hydrogen infrastructure to support the fuel cell vehicle rollout.
Fast-forward to today, and a few speeches stood out as a harbinger of things to come. First, McKinley Addy of the California Energy Commission (CEC) made a special announcement that the CEC has approved a budget of $120 Million per year for an 8 year period (total of $ 1 Billion) to help foster the commercialization and adoption of alternative fuels and clean energy technologies, including fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen refilling stations.
Second, Larry Burns, the Vice President of R&D and Strategic Planning at General Motors discussed GM’s perspective on hydrogen. Mr. Burns started by stating that the potential societal and consumer benefits of fuel cell technology are clear and compelling, and that no other technology offers this exciting potential. In fact, he stated that GM has not uncovered a single issue yet to suggest that mass volume of fuel cell vehicles cannot ultimately be attained. With that being the good news, Mr. Burns continued his talk by reaching out and challenging the energy providers stating that what is urgently needed is sufficient investment by energy providers to assure auto companies that the required hydrogen infrastructure will be in place when we deploy our next generation of fuel cell electric vehicles. In the view of GM, for the equivalent cost of 2 tanks of gasoline for every car in the U.S., we could deploy a hydrogen infrastructure that would put hydrogen refilling stations within 2 miles of 70% of our population. In closing his talk, he stated that together, we must act rather than debate, create the future rather than try to predict it, and solve the challenges we face now rather than handing these off to future generations.
As the meeting draws to a close, I feel enthusiastic about the future of fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen. I never did get to see Governor Schwarzenegger to deliver the fuel cells personally, but there is always next time.
