PHOENIX, Az: Nearly a year after the first time I drove GM's HydroGen fuel cell vehicle I got a chance at it again, and it's even more passe from a future technology perspective than it was then. It's like, so three years from now.
This time around, however, the technologicall-aged Opel Zafira minivan actually kept running, GM having overcome the fainting engine problem it had when I drove it in Brussels in 2000. That was probably good for GM's corporate ego (they were making much of the fact that the vehicle had just broken several records for fuel cell performance over 24 hours, but who knew any existed to be broken?), but it wasn't that much fun for the guest drivers.
After all, the HydroGen1 is easily the roughest and noisiest prototype vehicle I've ever driven, and they made us use the cruise control on a track that's as unchallenging as driving in a bowl that's 12 km round. Be still my heart.
But, again, the key message was the fact that at least it would run for considerable distances now and they were busy micro-measuring its performance in the heat that oppresses the desert here at this time of year.
Around the obligatory drive in the HydroGen1, the big story about fuel cell vehicles began to emerge. At the heart of it was the reality that technology had moved so far beyond where HydroGen1 is that we wouldn't believe it if they told us about it, which they wouldn't, becauses it's a hugely important competitive secret.
Future fuel cell apparatus is apparently so exciting that it made the chief of GM's program, Byron McCormick, as excited as an 8-year-old who knows that you're getting a bunch of hyper-cool stuff for Christmas but can't tell you about it.