As cars like the Toyota Mirai and the upcoming Honda Clarity Fuel Cell demonstrate, hydrogen fuel-cell technology in passenger cars is ready for prime time. But as the expensive sticker prices on those vehicles underscore, their greater cost of manufacturing is just one of many hurdles to overcome before these vehicles become more than a narrow subset of the green-car niche.
To address this problem, General Motors and Honda are teaming up to manufacture core fuel-cell hardware together at GM’s Brownstown Township, Michigan, facility, which will mass-produce components beginning around 2020. Each company is investing $42.5 million into the venture, which effectively will function as one company with fully shared development teams. It is anticipated that the effort will create nearly 100 jobs.
The components made at the Brownstown facility, which already assembles battery packs for a number of GM plug-in hybrids, including the Chevrolet Volt, will include a downsized next-generation fuel-cell stack.
Although several automakers have already partnered as groups to share in research-and-development costs for hydrogen fuel cells—Toyota and BMW, for one example, and Mercedes-Benz, Ford, and Nissan/Renault, for another—this is touted as the first fuel-cell-related manufacturing joint venture. The agreement will address manufacturing cost concerns through greater economies of scale and common sourcing.
Fuel cells harness a chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen (with the hydrogen stored typically in carbon-fiber tanks, at high pressures of 10,000 psi), producing electricity, water, and some heat. The fuel-cell “stacks,” where this reaction occurs between membrane-like layers, rely on very precise manufacturing and metallurgic techniques and have until now depended on the precious metal platinum.
The Path to Making Hydrogen Mainstream?
Dan Nicholson, GM’s global powertrain vice president, noted the millions of miles covered in both of the automakers’ efforts and said that it has all helped set a starting point for something bigger. The establishment of the facility, according to Nicholson, “officially marks the arrival of fuel cells. They’re not a science project anymore; they’re a mainstream alternative-energy choice.”
Although that’s an overstatement at best, both automakers have a long history with hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle development. GM mentioned its first Electrovan test vehicle from 1966 (shown above) and has demonstrated fuel-cell powertrains in a number of innovative vehicle forms over the years. One recent example is the military-grade Chevrolet Colorado ZH2—although it has been nearly 10 years since it built 100 Chevrolet Equinox fuel-cell test vehicles. And GM’s E-Flex powertrain technology, later renamed Voltec, in the Chevrolet Volt was originally conceived to accommodate fuel cells.
Honda aims for two-thirds of its global sales to be electrified vehicles by 2030—with fuel cells an important part of that effort. It also builds on several decades of fuel-cell-vehicle development. Its FCX minicar was originally tested in Japan in 1999 and in a few U.S. fleets beginning in 2002. Its FCX Clarity was offered as consumer lease on a limited scale, and Honda will soon launch its Clarity Fuel Cell, a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle that will go 366 miles between refueling stops. Honda has announced a $369-per-month 36-month lease for the Clarity Fuel Cell, while Toyota is offering its rival model, the Mirai, at $349 a month.
While manufacturing costs have been one major drag on hydrogen-powered vehicles until now, the GM-Honda announcement didn’t address the second stumbling block: infrastructure. Hydrogen refueling stations have typically cost $1 million or more per station, and while costs continue to decline somewhat, establishing more hydrogen refueling points is a far more expensive and daunting endeavor than, say, electric-vehicle fast charging.
For now, because of the extremely limited number of refueling locations, fuel-cell models are largely constrained to California, where the state’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) program has encouraged such vehicles. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, there are 33 publicly accessible hydrogen stations in the United States, with all but three of those in California.
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