General Motors and Honda officially tied the knot when both automakers announced a joint manufacturing venture to produce fuel cells at GM’s Brownstown, Michigan battery plant. Now, the operation has an official logo.
Both GM and Honda unveiled Fule Cell System Manufacturing LLC’s logo at a ceremony in Detroit, Michigan. The gathering also thanked local elected officials for helping to bring the operations to the state. Both GM and Honda are on track to produce the fuel cells around 2020 and will add 100 new jobs at the Brownstown plant.
From there, GM and Honda will utilize the fuel cell systems separately. The goal of the joint venture is to bring the cost of the product down and provide economies of scale for the budding propulsion method.
GM and Honda have each appointed leadership for the operation and both automakers agreed to rotate the positions of president and vice president between both automakers every two years. Both GM and Honda each appointed a board of directors with three executives from each automaker as well.
GM has stayed away from a mass production fuel cell vehicle as it believes the technology is changing too quickly. The automaker has said by the time it would introduce a fuel cell vehicle, the engineering would be obsolete. By waiting and utilizing this joint venture, GM could begin to dip its toes in fuel cells soon, though.
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Progress, step by step.
GM and Honda would be the ultimate merger. A transpacific Hyundai-Kia. Or a Renault Nissan Alliance.
Fuel cells are a good first step.
Fuel cell vehicles will be the direction to take given it’s clean; but Hydrogen fuel isn’t cheap as it’s about $16.50 per kilogram and in Toyota’s new fuel cell vehicle, the cost to travel a mile is about 33 cents whereas with a 2017 Chevrolet Cruze Diesel with EPA highway rating of 52 mpg and diesel fuel selling for about $2.55 per gallon, the cost in the Cruze Diesel to travel a mile is just 5 cents.
Meaning the cost to travel 12,000 miles is almost $4k ($3,960) for Hydrogen fuel while for the Cruze Diesel is just $588.46.
This is probably why almost 40-percent of all cars sold in Europe is diesel especially as Europe gets most of it’s Oil from Russia.
#H2 in California has already dropped from $16.50/kg to $9.99/kg and is near par with gasoline as fuel cells are twice as efficient as gasoline engines. This is a 40% drop in pricing in just a couple years with only 27 public stations open. The DOE has targets of $2.25 GGE (Gasoline Gallon Equivalent) by 2020. Gasoline also comes with societal costs and import/export deficits. Hydrogen alleviates environmental concerns, creates jobs, allows us to be 100% energy independent, and reduce import deficits with terrorist sponsoring countries.
Also, a Cruze is a tiny little thing and a Mirai or Clarity is a nice full size sedan. Fuel cells are coming, and they’re good for America and the world.
Hydrogen is actually very cheap when extracted directly from natural gas with high efficiency – the cost of doing this in bulk for the production of fertilizer or refinement of oil is less than $1/kg.
The part that adds significant cost currently is the high pressure delivery and dispensing equipment which hasnt had the benefit of any economies of scale yet, and secondly the fuel supply contracts for these early stations are small and require a price premium. With economies of scale in the equipment and larger supply contracts it is projected by the DoE among others that the GGe of H2 will be at parity with gasoline, and since the fuel cell vehicle is around 2x as efficient the operational cost shouldn’t be an issue. The carbon can even be sequestered and stored.
Even hydrogen produced via solar powered electrolysis is already cheaper than the number you cite – there is a European company ITM which reports H2 prices under $10/kg for this production method – surely those will drop and benefit greatly from the fact that solar creates negative pricing periods.
Hydrogen is the ticket.