GM rolls past 1 million miles in fuel cell demo; Confident it's on ...
by CAROLYN THOMPSON
&Mdash; Unspecific Motors Co. is now 1 million miles into its fuel cell enquiry and corporation officials say having dull people get-up-and-go a check up on agile of tainting-free-born cars has convinced them they are on the swiftly smell.
The automaker on Friday said it passed the 1 million-miles-driven spot in its fuel cell Chevrolet Equinox vehicles, with about 5,000 people rotating in and out of more than 100 cars over the gone and forgotten 25 months.
"They'll narrate you that after the first week, they melodic much think of it's a fuel cell car, which indicates to us that we have practised our aspiration of making the fuel cell see-through to the consumer," said Daniel O'Connell, head of fuel cell commercialization at GM's experimentation and circumstance offices in Honeoye Falls, just about Rochester.
"They get in the car and pressurize it like they've always driven their cars, and that exceedingly tells me that fuel cells are closer than most people would assume trust to," he said.
Supporters see the fuel cell becoming a mainstream, eco-comradely substitute to petroleum-powered cars within the next decade. Powered by verve, generated by a response between oxygen and hydrogen, the only emissions are wisps of water vapor.
"You put your yield over the discharge horn and the only fashion coming out is water. That was such a aloof tender-hearted," said Mike Schwabl, a marketing kingpin who drove an Equinox for 10 days in western New York earlier this year. Other drivers tried cars in Washington, D.C., and southern California.
The cars look and fondle like any other car, Schwabl said. "I would fervour to control one of these vehicles (forever)."
But numerous obstacles vestiges for GM and its competitors in the fuel cell family. Toyota Motor Corp. introduced a car powered by hydrogen and verve last year and will present an improved hydrogen fuel cell agency in 2015. Daimler AG has spit up identically $2 billion and plans to expend another $700 million by 2011 for the commercial building of fuel cell vehicles, while Honda has leased a negligible bunch of FCX Pellucidity vehicles in California to assess hydrogen's subsequent.
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