Bush administration to shift policy focus from gas and diesel power to fuel cells

DETROIT (Jan. 9, 2002) — The Bush administration is expected to announce today that it is scrapping a research initiative to improve the fuel economy of internal combustion engines and instead push the development of fuel-cell powered vehicles.

The administration will replace the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, on which the government has spent $1.5 billion US since the fiscal year beginning in 1994, with a program called Freedom Cooperative Automotive Research, or Freedom Car, the Detroit News reported today.

The aim of Freedom Car program will be to help develop a national infrastructure that could support the use of hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles.

“We do not want a car that succeeds in the laboratory and fails in the market,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in remarks prepared for delivery today at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. “We aim to apply America’s scientific and technological wizardry to eliminate passenger cars and trucks — including SUVs — as sources of pollution and greenhouse gasses. And we aim to do so without sacrificing freedom of mobility and freedom of choice.”

In the early 1990s, American automakers agreed to support the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, developed by the Clinton administration, in exchange for an implicit assurance from the government that they wouldn’t face tougher fuel-economy standards.

The goal of the PNGV program was to develop by 2004 the technology necessary to produce an affordable family sedan that would average 80 miles per gallon of gasoline. More than $1 billion US in federal funds have been spent on the PNGV program since its inception. The automakers also invested millions of dollars in research, much of it in improving diesel technology.

Fuel-cell-powered vehicles would radically change cars and trucks as we know them.

“There’s no internal-combustion engine, no drivetrain, no axles, no exhaust system, no radiator, no mechanical steering linkages,” remarked Larry Burns, vice-president of research and development at General Motors, as he introduced the company’s Autonomy fuel-cell concept car.

Autonomy is not a running prototype, but was designed to show how GM would package a fuel-cell stack and on-board hydrogen storage system with computerized electric motors to drive each wheel, each brake, and the steering.