General Motors said on Tuesday that it planned to develop and market hydrogen-based fuel cells to heat and power homes and businesses by mid-decade as a way of furthering a technology it one day expects to supplant the internal combustion engine.
But GM, like other automakers, does not plan on introducing fuel cell vehicles to the public until at least the end of the decade.
"Our commitment is to drive towards significant volume, hundreds of thousands, by the end of the decade," said Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development.
"It can change the world, it can change the industry," he added. "Automobiles can be reinvented around this technology."
A fuel cell generates electricity by separating the electrons from the protons of hydrogen atoms. The electrons generate a current, and then are recombined with their protons and with oxygen. Fuel cells are considered one of the cleanest ways of producing electricity because they emit water vapor and heat, though many fuel cells draw their hydrogen from methanol, gasoline or natural gas and emit some pollutants.
The first fuel cells were created in the 19th century. The technology was used on the lunar lander and GM created the first fuel cell powered concept vehicle in the late 1960s. Though all of the big car companies are working on vehicles powered by fuel cells in one form or another, making them viable in mass produced automobiles still faces many challenges. Fuel cells contain expensive precious metals like platinum and palladium, they have not been proven to work in extreme weather conditions and the nation's gas stations would need to be reconfigured.
On Tuesday, GM demonstrated a Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck powered by a gasoline fuel cell apparatus that took up less than half of the truck's bed, but the gasoline currently available has too high a sulfur content to be usable to power the cell.
GM said it plans to enter the home and business market through a partnership with one of the many companies developing fuel cells, but has not yet picked a partner. The automaker already has formed a partnership with General Hydrogen and Quantum Technologies, two companies making fuel cells or equipment for fuel cells, on automobile-related projects.
GM's entry should further crowd an already crowded field developing fuel cell technologies that also includes Plug Power of Latham, New York, International Fuel Cells, a subsidiary of United Technologies and Ballard Power Systems, a Canadian fuel cell company that has partnerships with Ford Motor Co and DaimlerChrysler.
"This validates the distributed power market, but GM should be viewed as a competitor," said Christine Farkas, a Merrill Lynch analyst.
Environmental groups, while praising progress on fuel cell research, said it was another modest incremental step and pointed out that GM's announcement came after its vigorous lobbying campaign that helped persuade the House of Representatives to exclude significantly tougher fuel economy standards in the new energy bill.
"They're trying to stave off using technologies they do have now," said Ann Mesnikoff, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club.
"Fuel cells are a technology on the horizon," she added. "But between now and fuel cells, there are dramatic improvements we can get."
Jason Mark, director of the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that "gasoline could compromise the potential of fuel cells."
"There will be some emissions from the tailpipe and the fuel economy might not be much greater than the hybrids available today," he added. "So what's the point?"
Burns of GM said the eventual goal was not a gasoline powered fuel cell, but one that could power a zero-emission vehicle. But the gas-powered cell would be an intermediate step and would, he said, improve typical gas mileage by 50 percent. Toyota's Prius, a hybrid car that has an electric and a gasoline engine, is already in that ballpark. He also said that the gas-powered fuel cell would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent.
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