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Originally Posted by Mike88
there's something I'm not clear on and maybe its because I haven't read enough about it but, what if GM has a substantial portion of its fleet running on hydrogen fuel cells by 2020 when CAFE standards come into play? Does this mean that the rest of its gas-powered fleet will still have to avg 35 mpg, or will fuel cell vehicles somehow compensate for other vehicles not yet reaching 35 mpg?
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I doubt that they could have a large enough percentage of their fleet running on hydrogen by 2020, the main reason is that there isn't going to be a big enough supply of hydrogen fuel by then. I don't know of any large scale production plants slated for construction. Sure there are ideas on how to do it in large quataties but nobody has agreed to foot the bill yet and actually do it. Lets assume that GM makes 8000 hydrogen fueled vehicles, and the other manufacturers account for another 8000. I think that makes for roughly 0.1% of cars in the US. multiply that by 10 and it still won't have much of an effect. How so? well lets figure that th e regulators decided that a hydrogen powered vehicle is 100 mpg equiv. For GM, by making 80 000 of these, they will cause a 1.3 mpg boost to their fuel economy average.
However, it is still going to help though. And they need it. Thats why I like their approach, put money into everthing: E85, hydrogen, hybrids, and improving the efficiency of regular gasoline engines. That way, when 1 thing turns out to be impractical they have alternatives and don't have to play catchup.