General Motors Advances in the Direction of Clean Fuel

GM Beyond Oil: This article concerns the remarks by Dr. Larry Burns, VP of Research and Development for General Motors (GM) to the National Hydrogen Association conference on April 2, 2008. I will let you read the article to get all the details but I wanted to put down a few thoughts/predictions of my own.

First, I think hydrogen vehicles will be limited to government or quasi-government fleets for quite a while. Many bus, garbage truck and airport fleets already have some of their vehicles on CNG or LNG for clean air purposes. They have installed the necessary infrastructure to handle gaseous fuels. Conversion to hydrogen would be a smaller undertaking and many of their current natural gas vehicles would run fine on hydrogen with minor modifications.

I do not see the infrastructure for hydrogen rapidly spreading for public use. The capital cost is too high and the amount of vehicles to take the fuel will be too low for too long a time to justify the capital expenditure.

Biofuel use will continue to grow, primarily blended with gasoline and diesel. I think E20 and B20 (20% ethanol or biodiesel) will become more and more common. Testing on vehicles show blends to this level to have no performance effects on cars and trucks currently on the road. Flex fuel vehicles running E85 will not be a big player due to limited E85 availability and decreased fuel mileage with high ethanol blends. It will take quite a few years to develop the production to be able to replace 20% of our petroleum fuel with biofuel.

Hybrid electric and full electric will become the majority of new vehicles sold in the U.S. especially in urban areas. We all have the ability to “refuel” an electric car at our homes. General Motors has made a big step in this direction by offering hybrid SUVs and pickup trucks. We all know how popular the Toyota (TM) Prius has been. Car and pickup buyers want style, power and safety and better fuel economy will be a bonus. Cars like the Chevy Volt (picture below) will change how many people think of their cars. The Volt has an all-electric power train and uses an internal combustion engine only to recharge the batteries.

Many people worried about the effects of massive petroleum use (economic and environmental) want everyone to drive 100 mpg/electric/fuel cell econoboxes. Americans have too much of a love affair with their vehicles to be that practical. I think the shift away from petroleum fuel will be very gradual taking the steps I have outlined above. Since this is primarily an investment blog I have a question: Are there any publicly traded companys that as their primary business manufacture hydrogen powered commercial trucks?

Comments

[User 182294]

You know, it's interesting that you point out that Americans have a love affair with their vehicles. I agree. That leads me to disagree however with your conclusion that Americans will be driving full battery-electric vehicles. Sure, many people can plug-in their cars, but enough to really warrant high volume production of full battery-electric vehicles? I don't think so. And most Americans live in the city, without a garage. So that's a more significant issue than most realize. As is the range. Battery electric vehicles will never compete with the 300-400 mile range that family cars need to have.

So I agree with you that Americans will be driving hybrid electric and full electric vehicles. But I think those full electric vehicles are more likely to have a hydrogen fuel cell in them to provide the electricity than a couple of massive batteries.

In the end, we'll need a variety of solutions. Each has its costs and benefits. Here's to hoping that soon, we'll have a variety of alternative technology/fuel vehicles to choose from in the showroom.