“He’s one of the smallest operations that has put a working situation in place,” said GM research engineer Ian Sutherland, who said his company has hand-built about 120 fuel cell vehicles that run on hydrogen.
GM already has its electric car in showrooms, but Sutherland said auto companies are also looking for cheaper, renewable and environmentally-friendly fuels to replace a fast-depleting supply of fossil fuels.
“I don’t think electricity will ever be the final fuel we use,” Sutherland said. “We also are testing compressed natural gas. Fuel cells are good because they are a fast transfer of energy, have a longer driving range and have almost zero emissions coming out of the tailpipe.”
One problem is the fuel tank is about five times the size of tanks the carry gas now used to travel the same distance, although the vehicle GM displayed Saturday appeared to have plenty of room for four passengers and luggage. It was the size of a small SUV. It also has instant pick-up.
Unlike GM’s electric Volt, which takes six to eight hours to charge and has a range of 40-60 miles before it changes over to gas, a cell car fuels in about the same amount of time a user takes to fuel a gas vehicle, and the driving range is up to 300 miles.
McWhinney has been working on developing a more cost-effective and reliable fueling system for several years.
Sutherland thinks there may be several solutions to future fuels and thinks with the work Millennium has done, it is possible the Miami Valley area could be a test market with maybe 15 fueling stations similar to the one at the Dull Homestead and maybe five more on the drive to Detroit where more extensive testing is done.
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