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from the whats-better-than-twenty-electric-eels dept.
General Motors is the latest car company to unveil plans for an emissions-free future. On Monday morning, the US' largest automaker announced that the next 18 months will see two new electric vehicles join the Bolt EV in showrooms, and 18 more are due by 2023. "GM believes in an all-electric future and a world free of automotive emissions," said Mark Reuss, GM's executive VP for product development, purchasing, and supply chain. "When the Bolt EV was announced at CES it was described as a platform, and this is the next step."
[...] Many of these cars will be built on an evolution of the Bolt's architecture using a second-generation battery pack. But they won't just be battery EVs—GM's electric future will involve hydrogen fuel cells. "We need to meet customer needs, whether that's the school run, a fun summer drive, or towing 1,000s of lbs. It can't be a one-size-fits-all approach," Reuss said.
GM and Honda have been collaborating on hydrogen fuel cell technology since 2013, and more recently the US Army has been testing a hydrogen-powered Chevrolet Colorado truck. "Now we're taking the technology to launch," said Charlie Freese, GM's executive director of fuel cell business, citing commercial and military applications as the initial goal. The fuel cells will be built at its Brownstown plant, which also makes the batteries in the Bolt and Volt.
Time to unload that gas car before it loses all trade-in value?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 04 2017, @12:24AM
Except, of course, when they can do that [ct.gov]. And as noted elsewhere, even when those pumps don't work doesn't mean that all pumps don't work. There are other ways to get gasoline out such as the already mentioned hand pumps. Let us also keep in mind that it's rather easy to transfer gas from other vehicles and store it in cans or tanks.
This brings up one of the obvious problems with battery storage. You can't run emergency vehicles off of it for very long when the grid is down. You can run gas and diesel-powered vehicles in such a situation as long as the relatively simple logistics of hydrocarbon fuels hold up (and for considerably longer than electric vehicles can when the logistics don't hold up). I think a few disaster response fails from dense urban areas heavily dependent on electric vehicles will illustrate this problem.
Once again, we see the problem of choosing winners and losers without regard to the costs or performance of the new technologies.