• Detroit Free Press, Friday, June 15, 2007 11:45 AM

General Motors signaled the start of production engineering of its hydrogen fuel cell yesterday when it told employees at its Honeoye Falls, N.Y., fuel-cell development facility that it will shift more than 500 of the fuel-cell engineers to core production engineering divisions from its advanced development laboratories division. That could lead to the hydrogen fuel-cell version of the Chevrolet Volt being ready for significant production as early as 2010.

Larry Burns, GM's vice president of research development and strategic planning, says more than 400 GM fuel-cell engineers will report to GM's powertrain group to begin production engineering of fuel-cell systems. Another 100 will transfer to the global product development organization to start integrating fuel cells into future GM vehicles. "We don't build cars in research labs," says Burns.

Fuel cells create electricity by stripping electrons off hydrogen when it passes through a thin membrane. The byproduct--water--is the only emission.

Read the whole story at Detroit Free Press »