September 19, 2021: I'm picking up my 6-year-old niece from school. The little scamp comes hurdling across the playground and bounces into the back seat of my Chevy.

It hits me: My niece has never known the world where man's greatest source of power was oil. She has never stood behind a running car and coughed on the exhaust. The only by-product of cars today is water vapour.

Currently, several automakers are racing to make this future prediction a reality with cars powered by fuel cell technology. Yet though many are trying, General Motors seems to be vaporizing the competition (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun): It has the world’s largest fuel cell vehicle fleet on the road today. Approximately 100 Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell SUVs are on the streets of California, New York, and Washington D.C.

http://www.gm.ca/gm/english/corporate/green-by-design/technology/hydroge...

This Equinox fleet is part of a trial (“Project Driveway”) to test GM’s fourth-generation fuel cell propulsion system in the real world. The current fuel cell, designed specifically for this project, has a life expectancy of approximately 2.5 years (or up to 80,000 kilometres). Not on par with your current Chevy, but keep in mind that this is only the fourth step of a continuous project.

In fact, fuel cell technology has been around since the early 1800s, but the ability to capture it to power an automobile has only been developed over the last 10 to 15 years. The fuel cell acts like a battery. Rather than storing electricity like a conventional battery, however, the hydrogen fuel cell produces electricity when it is combined with oxygen. Think of it like a Grade Nine science project: Take oxygen from the air and unite it with 4.2 kilograms of compressed hydrogen, housed in three cylinders; pull a couple of nifty chemical reactions and H and O become H2O: water vapour. Et voilà! A car producing zero emissions.

A small snag: Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius. GM responded with extensive testing at their Cold Weather Development Centre in Kapuskasing, Ont. where temperatures can get lower than -40 degrees Celsius. Dick Kauling, senior manager, engineering and product planning at General Motors of Canada Ltd., affirms that they have overcome this hurdle. “We have been able to start a very cold vehicle not once or twice, but thousands of times. We know the dynamics of managing water vapour and the associated ‘freeze-start’ condition.” The current vehicle has the ability to operate at temperatures as low as -25 degrees Celsius.

So, this thing works. But just how well does it work?

The Equinox produces 93 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power 10 homes or, in automotive terms, 120 horsepower. Not overpowered, but it can go from dead stop to 100km/h in 12 seconds and has a top speed of 160 km/h and a maximum driving range of 320 kilometres.

The Equinox is safe. Hydrogen may be a volatile gas (then again, so is gasoline), but GM has protected the storage tanks inside the vehicle to withstand day-to-day use. These vehicles meet the same motor vehicle safety standards that any other car on the road has to obtain.

A Canadian baby, the SUV is built at GM’s facility in Oshawa, Ont. However, it is unlikely that this technology will be hitting Canadian streets in vast quantities soon. Canadian cities lack the necessary infrastructure: There are only about a dozen hydrogen filling stations in Canada. Fortunately, Kauling reports that GM is working with companies such as Air Liquide (the industrial and medical gases experts), and has an open dialogue with the Canadian Federal and Provincial governments to support the development of this technology. GM is continuously looking for opportunities directed toward commercialization (for example, improving infrastructure codes). It will be a while before we see a hydrogen filling station on every corner, but we are certainly headed in that direction.

GM engineers are currently working on their fifth-generation fuel cell, which has been shown in the Cadillac Provoq concept vehicle. This next generation is reported to be half the physical size of the current unit. According to Kauling, a smaller fuel cell “stack” will allow it to be placed in a broader range of vehicles.

General Motors hopes to have fuel cell vehicles available en masse at some future point, though Kauling is realistic enough to refuse to discuss exact dates. If GM has its way, however, the polluting internal combustion engine might, in our lifetimes, be a thing of the past.

Angela Trimmer is the Women’s Post automotive editor.