GM eyes training site in Tarrytown for hydrogen cars

General Motors Corp. wants to expand into the region its billion-dollar program to develop a hydrogen-powered car by teaching the technology to its repair technicians at its Training Center in Tarrytown.

The auto giant would renovate a garage classroom within the training center to accommodate

GM's plan will be the subject tonight (Jan. 23) of a public hearing at Tarrytown's Planning Board meeting. The board will meet at 7 p.m. at the Municipal Building, 21 Wildey St.

"We believe that strategically it's going to be important for us to branch out now beyond just the one East Coast and one West Coast site that we have, and cover different ,parts of the country," said Bill Shepard, field operations manager for GM fuel cell activities. "We think Westchester County is quite strategically important to us given its demographics, given the fact that it's the headquarters for many corporations."

The presence of those corporations, Shepard said, should give GM several potential additional customers for fleet sales of its hydrogen cars once production moves to the commercial stage. The automaker has persuaded the U.S. Postal Service to use one of its hydrogen cars to deliver mail in suburban Washington.

"We think there's lots of opportunity of that sort in New York," Shepard said. "This is something that we're going to want to hang our hat on as a society some time in the future, and in our company's case, we're betting it's going to be a little sooner, and we're trying to be ready for that."

GM hopes to have its Tarrytown hydrogen car center ready by 2007. Before then, the company may shift to Westchester one or two of the hydrogen cars now in the Washington area.

New York is one of four regions where GM has plans to deploy 40 demonstration hydrogen vehicles by 2009, under an $88 million agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy signed last year.

BETTING THE FUTURE

By betting its future on the hydrogen car, GM hopes that future will be much rosier than its past. During the first nine months of 2005 the company was beset by a $2.2 billion net loss despite marketing successes like its "employee" discount price promotion. In November, GM announced plans to save $7 billion a year by cutting 30,000 jobs by 2008 through the shutdown of four assembly plants, two engine plants and two stamping plants. Its share of the U.S. auto market has dropped by half in the 40 years ending last year, to 25 percent.

"We're trying to be ready early in the next decade to be commercial with the new technology," Shepard said, adding that a more precise timetable will emerge as GM tests its technology and oil prices determine the extent of consumer demand.

That timeframe is overly optimistic given the technology and economic issues still unresolved, says a longtime critic of hydrogen-car technology.

Joseph Romm, executive director and founder of the nonprofit Center for Energy and Climate Solutions in Arlington, Va., says hydrogen cars will need to last between 5,000 and 10,000 hours, and sell at or below the cost of hybrids, milestones he predicts GM won't reach for decades.

Romm, author of "The Hype About Hydrogen," (Island Press, 2004), says GM also needs to set up a network of refueling centers comparable to the nation's 180,000 gas stations, something he said would be very unusual for a single car company to undertake. In 2004 California announced plans to build a $90 million "hydrogen highway" or network of up to 200 hydrogen fueling stations statewide.

GM says it is studying how refueling areas should be developed. As stand-alone centers, within dealerships or some other way?

"GM made a blunder by focusing too much on hydrogen and not enough on hybrids. GM overemphasized hydrogen and that delayed their entry into the hybrid market," said Romm, the Energy Department's top renewable technologies official under President Bill Clinton.

Not surprisingly GM disagrees, noting its planned rollout for the 2007 model year of a hybrid version of the Saturn Vue, which boasts gas mileage of 27 mpg. GM says the hybrid system will cost $2,000 per car and the cars themselves will sell for under $23,000.

HYBRID COMPETITION

GM faces competition from several rivals, notably the leader in gas-electric hybrid cars, Toyota, which sold 107,897 hybrid Prins cars in 2005, double the previous year's volume. This year, the Japanese car giant projects it will sell 400,000 hybrids under its own name and sister luxury brand Lexus. On Jan. 9, Toyota unveiled two new hybrids for the 2007 model year that starts this fall, the Camry and Lexus LS, with the former boasting a gas mileage of 43 mpg in city driving, Toyota says.

Ford has promised hybrid versions of five cars by 2008, while DaimlerChrysler is teaming up with GM to produce hybrid SUVs set to hit dealerships in 2008. Rising gas prices are credited with compelling drivers to buy hybrid cars.

GM says its hydrogen fuel cell technology will offer, when perfected, the benefits of zero-emissions, as well as better efficiency and less engine wear than gas engines.

In Tarrytown, GM would house one or two hydrogen cars at the training center, with some staffers from Washington or California. As the program expands, more cars would be stationed in Tarrytown and the company would add employees, though the number is not expected to exceed a half-dozen engineers and technicians, Shepard said.

GM would also use the training center for maintenance of its hydrogen car fleet and refueling of vehicles. The latter is risky enough, Romm said, to require the highest industrial standards, something GM has promised to uphold.

Shepard said the hydrogen fueling area will be limited to 10 kilograms of storage, would include sensors and alarms to ensure safety, and not be accessible to customers.

The Tarrytown project would reverse a decade of retrenchment for GM in Westchester. Last month GM's pension fund completed a $255 million sale of the 1.6 million-squarefoot EastRidge Properties office portfolio to Reckson Associates Realty Corp.

And in 1996 the auto maker idled 2,000 workers by shutting down its minivan assembly plant in Sleepy Hollow. GM plans to sell the 98-acre campus to Roseland Property Co. of Short Hills, N.J., which plans to build a mixed residential-commercialrecreation community on the site. The project, Lighthouse Landing, is under review by village officials.