GM sees hydrogen cars on market by 2010-2015

General Motors Corp. has made major steps in developing a commercially viable hydrogen-powered vehicle and expects it can get the emission-free cars into dealerships in the next four to nine years, a spokesman told AFP. GM also expects it will be able to “equal or better gas engines in terms of cost, durability and performance” once it is able to ramp up volume to at least 500,000 vehicles a year, said GM spokesman Scott Fosgard.

There are still a number of barriers to the commercialization of hydrogen-powered cars. One is the infrastructure cost of building refueling stations. Another big challenge is reducing the cost of obtaining hydrogen itself, which has to be extracted from fossil fuels, such as carbon, or from water.

“In the most favourable conditions, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles would enter the market (in mass numbers) around 2025 and power 30 percent of the global stock of vehicles by 2050 — the equivalent of about 700 million vehicles,” the IEA said in a recent report.

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