Thursday, July 14, 2005

Hydrogen vs. Hybrid - GM's Bet

Wired has up an interview with Larry Burns, GM's vice president of R&D and strategic planning - where they talk about GM's work with Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology. It's interesting to see GM's perspective on why they are going where no other automaker seems to be going.

What long-term problem have we fixed with the miracle of a hybrid? If you woke up tomorrow and all 220 million cars and trucks in the United States had been hybridized to the degree that the Prius has - all getting 25 percent better fuel economy - in six years we would be consuming the same amount of petroleum that we are right now.

I have no doubt that they will be able to produce a HFC vehicle - in fact they have - my only questions are how will GM make it so that people want to buy these vehicles and how are they going to proliferate hydrogen filling stations? If they could answer those questions satisfactorily I just might jump on their bandwagon.

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