General Motors and the US Department of Energy have signed a five-year, $88-million agreement to build a 40-vehicle fuel cell fleet and explore future possibilities for the technology.
The agreed program will include GM spending $44-million to deploy fuel cell vehicle demonstration fleets in Washington DC, New York, California and Michigan. The US Department of Energy (DOE) will contribute the other half of the budget, under a deal that expires in September 2009.
GM’s tie-up with the US government is the latest in a pipeline of new fuel initiatives involving the world’s largest automotive company. Earlier in the year, GM inked a deal with Shell Hydrogen to set up five hydrogen refueling stations in Washington DC, metropolitan New York City and between Washington DC and New York, or the East Coast Corridor, and in California.
Other program partners for the development of the next generation energy include the US Army at Ft Belvoir and Quantum Technologies in Lake Forest, both of which provide facilities for GM to store and maintain fuel cell vehicles; NextEnergy in Detroit for codes and standards development; and Viewpoint Systems in Rochester, New York for collecting and retrieving data remotely.