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CHICAGO, Mar 02, 2006 -- AFX News - UK
General Motors Corp has made major steps in developing a commercially viable hydrogen-powered vehicle and expects to get the emission-free cars into dealerships in the next four to nine years, a spokesman told Agence France-Presse. GM has partnered with Toyota Motor Corp for a number of years on developing the experimental fuel-cell technology. On Thursday, the automaker announced that while it will continue its tie-up with Toyota on other advanced technologies, it will no longer be sharing its fuel-cell research. "Because of the advances we made that type of technology is passing from the research phase to development," Fosgard said. Fuel cells produce electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, leaving water as the only by-product. They are far more environmentally friendly than the currently popular hybrid gas-electric engines which merely reduce the amount of gas needed to power the vehicle. There are still a number of barriers to the commercialization of hydrogen-powered cars. One is the infrastructure cost of building refueling stations. Another big challenge is reducing the cost of obtaining hydrogen itself, which has to be extracted from fossil fuels, such as carbon, or from water. The International Energy Agency has said that if conditions are right, hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells could play key roles in weaning energy users away from oil, gas and coal. "In the most favourable conditions, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles would enter the market (in mass numbers) around 2025 and power 30 pct of the global stock of vehicles by 2050 -- the equivalent of about 700 mln vehicles," the IEA said in a recent report. "The oil saving would then be equivalent to some 13 pct of global oil demand, or five pct of global energy demand." mso/vs/dg/tr News Provided By |
