GM CEO: electric cars require teamwork; hydrogen cars 10x more expensive than Volt
New GM CEO Fritz Henderson has some good words for his competitors. Surprised? It's all in an effort to make sure that plug-in vehicles get the help they need to become cost competitive. Henderson spoke with the Washington Post and said that costs are the big problem holding back electric cars. To bring costs down, he said:
The more companies that actually develop technologies around electric, the more the supply structure will develop, the better off we'll be. . . . We can't carry the load ourselves. GM can't. No way. We need to have more companies. We source most of these things. We don't do them. We're not in the chemistry business.
On the more comment-generating side of things, Henderson also discussed GM's current hydrogen vehicle status. He said that GM isn't putting as many resources into the H2 program as was before. Adding:
We spent through the mid part of this decade a reasonably high portion of our research and our development money on hydrogen fuel cells. We put 100 vehicles into the market. Consumers have tested them . . . We've learned a lot. The vehicles work. The issue is always cost, 100 percent cost. It's still a ways away from commercialization. No question.
Finally, some numbers. Henderson said the Volt will likely cost around $40,000 while a hydrogen vehicle would cost around $400,000. So, comment much?
[Source: Washington Post]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Turbofrog 4:12PM (10/30/2009)
I think that's been the general consensus for a while, regarding costs. Fuel cells have plenty of great applications, cars just aren't one of them.
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zamafir 5:02PM (10/30/2009)
Yup, we've known it since the first prototypes rolled out. I drove one of nissan's half a decade ago (x-trail based) and it cost six figures. amazingly, the FCV also costs... six figures. We're not going to see a consumer hydrogen fuel cell car on *sale* for a very long time.
Joeviocoe 4:14PM (10/30/2009)
The hydrogen house of cards is falling.
The passenger vehicle market will not accept hydrogen. It's overall inefficiency, it's requirement for new infrastructure, the fact that current oil companies stand to continue their profits from it, etc.
BEVs are where it's gonna be. They just need to drop the price/kwh and that will be done through simple capitalism soon enough.
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ge 4:16PM (10/30/2009)
So the Honda FCX Clarity is a $400,000 car?! Really?
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Mark Kiernan 4:19PM (10/30/2009)
500,000 acutally
polo 4:30PM (10/30/2009)
Actually the Honda Clarity is in the $1-2MILLION range. I don't know what kind of dangerous clunker $400K would get you (for a hydrogen car).
Hopefully Honda will use the Clarity as the shell for its first BEV, and we pretend they never toyed around with this whole hydrogen/hoax thingy.
dwarg 4:25PM (10/30/2009)
GM CEO says, "The issue is always cost, 100 percent cost."
Well that and efficiency... and infrastructure... oh and then there's all that platinum we'd need.... but yeah cost is a big one too.
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letstakeawalk 4:38PM (10/30/2009)
We knew hydrogen fuel cells were too expensive for current production, but it is nice to finally get a number. I'd be interested to know what Toyota is expecting their FCV to cost.
Fuel cell prices will drop over time, the cost of technology always decreases as engineers find better materials and processes. In the meantime, lessons learned with fuel cells will allow them to continue their inroads into consumer electronics and stationary CHP home markets.
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Mark Kiernan 4:47PM (10/30/2009)
Fuel cells however, will never get over the energy lost from source to tank.
meme 6:19PM (10/30/2009)
"I'd be interested to know what Toyota is expecting their FCV to cost."
You talking about the FCHV-adv? They lease it right now for about $8k a month.
Yes, fuel cell prices have dropped over time. They've gone down about half an order of magnitude in the past fifteen years. So just two more orders of magnitude to go...
Bill 6:58PM (10/30/2009)
Or the efficiency issue - will we see even 60% in a production stack?
Dave D 8:56PM (10/30/2009)
@takeawalk,
You're ignoring the obvious point and that's what I can't understand as I see all your posts on ABG.
EV's are already down in the $40k range and the HFC vehicles are somewhere between $400k-$1,000,000. So if they both drop as the technologies mature then the EV's will always be ahead.
The other thing I keep waiting for someone to answer is this: How can ANYONE push H2 when it is going to come from natural gas anyway? If you want a big tank of fuel in your trunk then why not just use the natural gas today??? No fuss, no muss, no billions of dollars in further research to make the fuel cells work, no fancy new infrastructure.
It is not physically possible to reform natural gas to get the hydrogen out of it and have more energy than was held in the original natural gas...simple laws of physics. So it loses before you even start the discussion about infrastructure, costs, storage, distributions, etc, etc.
I want someone to show a true business case for why you would go with H2 instead of just using the natural gas it will come from.
Chris M 2:44AM (10/31/2009)
Well, Dave D, someone can push H2 fuel for cars if they just don't know any better, or if they have a financial interest in promoting H2. It's not always easy to tell which of those 2 category a H2 promoter fits in.
Yes, fuel cell prices have come down from insane to merely extravagant. 40 years ago, a H2 fuel cell car would have cost $4 million, today a mere $400,000! At that rate of progress, we might have affordable H2FC cars by 2050. Of course by then plug-ins (BEVs and PHEVs) will be dominant, and nobody will consider buying a H2 car running on more expensive and hard to find H2 fuel.
Obviously DaMinority 7:01AM (11/02/2009)
@ Dave D
One reason to promote H2 is the 'potential' for the unknown. Here's what I mean. What the non-'NG company' promoters might be looking for is the hope of a new 'technology' coming soon where you can pass CNG through a tube with magic crystals and you get a tank full of H2 and diamonds that can be shaken off the crystals and mounted in a ring setting unaltered. Oh and the apparatus would be the size of a push lawn mower and cost $1 and generate enough spare electricity to power your house.
Funny, it sounds like "Mr. Hydrogen" is the future instead of "Mr. Fusion".
Dave D 7:50PM (11/02/2009)
@obviously....
Are you serious? What the hell are you even talking about? Let's compare what is there today.
Dude, you're making up silly analogies about diamond rings and lawn mowers. Like everyone else who pushes H2, you won't answer a straightforward question:
Why go through all the extra steps and loss of energy, extra costs, new technology breakthroughs, new infrastructure, etc etc etc. Why not use Natural Gas vehicles today??? You can get a CNG Honda Civic TODAY, with over a 200 mile range for ~$22,000. It works, it runs, it has the same performance as other cars.
By the way, that $22,000 is NOT including any gov't subsidies. AND, there are over 1,600 stations where you can get natural gas today...compare that to the less than TEN, heavily subsidized, experimental stations (all located in California) today! Not to mention people who could get it from their own home because they already get natural gas for heating, hot water, etc and I'm certain the gas company would be happy to sell some mechanism to refuel from home if you asked. They are in the business of selling that stuff and it is in place today.
This is so typical. Everytime you get an H2 supporter, they find a way to make some silly statement rather than answer any straightforward scientific or economic questions.
Answer the questions with facts or shut up.
Again: Why would you not just use Natural Gas today rather than spend billions to reform it, lose energy, create a new infrastructure, overcome another decade of technical challenges, possibly NEVER reach a cost competitive level...all to use the natural gas you have today???
Seriously, someone show us some numbers and facts. Nobody wants to hear your silly analogies about diamond rings and lawn mowers. If you can't hold a serious discussion with intelligence and facts then you need to quit bothering people.
jpm 4:55PM (10/30/2009)
A decade and most of your research money to put 100 FC cars on the road. Yay! Way to go GM! And consumers "tested" them. LOL. Yeah whatever. HFC were your excuse to get out of the CA mandate and ditch the EV1. What a joke. I hope the Volt fails miserable... I know I'll never buy one.
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Matt234 10:46PM (10/30/2009)
Looking at your other comments, they are all negative. Why all this hate?
What's wrong with wishing the Volt to be a success? Wouldn't that be a great thing? Or do you just hate GM so much that you would rather have us all fail before they have success?
jpm 10:54PM (10/30/2009)
Well of course. They deserved to be hated on because they suck. GM is bogus company. Well maybe the management. They didn't way ANYTHING to do with green/efficient vehicles until just recently; before they lobbied HARD against doing anything, and now they're changing their tune big time. They built ugly, oversized vehicles for way too long and ditched the EV1. They failed. Now us taxpayers get to bail out an otherwise failed company. Do you like knowing that your tax dollars are going to a lousy company who makes lousy decisions? I don't; hence the hate. And please don't ask why I'm not going off on the bank bailouts. They're 100x worse.
Matt234 9:05PM (10/31/2009)
But _all_ your comments are negative. Every single comment I can see in your comment history is pooping all over something.
I have an idea - you might need this! (Always look on the bright side of life)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo
Doug 4:58PM (10/30/2009)
Actually the article said, "He put the cost of the vehicles at upwards of $400,000."
That means at least $400K. It could very well be and probably is much more than that.
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