GM Invests Further In Fuel Cell Technology

The American General Motors Corporation has said that it plans to hire as many as a hundred more scientists and engineers in upstate New York as the worlds largest automaker prepares to build hundreds of thousands of fuel cell autos per year by 2010.

The Detroit-based company already
employs two hundred such scientists and engineers at its fuel cell research center in Honeoye Falls, a suburb of Rochester. General Motors also employs three hundred fuel cell researchers in Warren, Michigan, and Mainz-Kastel, Germany.

Automakers are investing billions of dollars to develop fuel cells, which combine hydrogen with oxygen to generate electricity to power a motor, as a cleaner alternative to the traditional gasoline internal combustion engines as governments toughen air-pollution laws. Both the Honda Motor Company and the Toyota Motor Corporation say that they will begin leasing fuel cell vehicles to small groups of US and Japanese customers before the end of this year.

?GM has put its eggs into the fuel-cell basket? rather than into the gasoline-electric hybrid technology, said Fitch Ratings analyst Chris Struve, who studies the effect of new technology and environmental rules on automakers for the bond-rating service. ?They perceive themselves as the leader in this technology and want to play a big role in shaping the market.?

Author: Neftegaz.ru