Oh, Look! GM Has A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Concept Car!

[hatrack]

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — General Motors Corp. has achieved a milestone in its quest to bring a hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle to market, announcing that it now has a drivable version of its Sequel concept car.

The Sequel, which looks like a shrunken minivan and has a range of 300 miles, will be shown to reporters next month in California, GM Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said Thursday during a speech at the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City.

But production and sale of the Sequel is a long way off. Wagoner wouldn't give a time estimate for when the public could buy one. (Ed. - emphasis added)

"That's rocket science when you get in that car," he said. "This is the most sophisticated product, technologically advanced product, I think we've ever made in the history of GM."


EDIT

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11042

Really, Rick? Color me SHOCKED.

[bluerum]

1. Hydrogen gas is extremely explosive.

This technology is just inviting terra-istas to use it against us. GM must be in cahoots with them.

[hatrack]

2. That's IT! GM hates our freedom!

:evilgrin:

[mrdmk]

6. Not to mention that the hydrogen molecule is the smallest known to man

There is no container that can hold this gas for a very long time. Bullshit technology.

[EVDebs]

3. Hydrogen PEMs run on platinum catalysts...

Which is a little expensive per oz. these days. GM would have done better to investigate metal air fuel cells, such as the eVionyx.com systems

http://www.evionyx.com/vision.htm#products_and_applications

and Arotech's

http://www.electric-fuel.com/efl.html

and

http://www.electric-fuel.com/ev/index.shtml

Zinc is at less than $1 per pound; platinum is at around $800 an oz.

Go figure.

[cyberpj]

4. Who Killed The Electric Car?

GM had a great product years ago that they trashed in the name of OIL. I would buy NOTHING from them now. Proud Prius owner here since 2002.

[Burried News]

5. The same guys that killed the electric trollies in the US. GM

Of course they've been used in Northern Europe for over 70 years.
http://www.evadc.org/news.html
http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm
Excerpt:
"General Motors sought to reduce competition from electric railways through a variety of measures, including the use of freight leverage. GM, for decades, was the nation's largest shipper of freight over railroads, which controlled some of America's most extensive railways. By wielding freight traffic as a club, GM persuaded railroads to abandon their electric rail subsidiaries.

With a pack of notorious mobsters, GM helped purchase and scrap the street railways serving Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Members of GM's special unit went to, among others, the Southern Pacific, owner of Los Angeles' Pacific Electric, the world's largest interurban, with 1,500 miles of track, reaching 75 miles from San Bernardino, north to San Fernando, and south to Santa Ana; the New York Central, owner of the New York State Railways, 600 miles of street railways and interurban lines in upstate New York; and the New Haven, owner of 1,500 miles of trolley lines in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

In each case, by threatening to divert lucrative automobile freight to rival carriers, they persuaded the railroad (according to GM's own files) to convert its electric street cars to motor buses -- slow, cramped, foul-smelling vehicles whose inferior performance invariable led riders to purchase automobiles." END of Excerpt from second link.

[Dissenting_Prole]

7. Do you think?

When gas is $6 a gallon in 2014, do you think that GM dealers will give SUV owners much more than $5,000 trade in credit on their gas-guzzling Tahoes (that no one will want) for a brand new, $50,000 hydrogen compact car? Who is going to be buying these, especially when the economy is imploding due to oil depletion?

As it is, I give GM about 8 months before they're done.

[Javaman]

8. They are high on concept, but low on reality. nt

[Odin2005]

9. PR stunt.

We won't have the huge amount of clean energy to make hydrogen economically viable on a large scale untill we get fusion power.

[megatherium]

10. Drivable!? So the Sequel I saw on display in Montreal two summers ago

was just a prop? Those scoundrels.

[Ezlivin]

11. My bold prediction: We will NEVER see a hydrogen vehicle on the road

Apart from a demo or a prototype, there will never be a fleet of hydrogen powered vehicles.

We will never have cheap and plentiful fusion power from which to generate the necessary hydrogen.

EROEI always wins.

[phantom power]

12. We could make it, but it's too impractical as a motor fuel.

it's more practical and safer to manufacture other kinds of fuel molecules.