Honda Motor Co. will be offering the Civic model, the best selling small car in the U.S., as a hybrid-electric. It will first be sold overseas and is expected to enter the U.S. market in model year 2002 or 2003. All Honda four-cylinder gasoline engines worldwide will meet California’s super-ultra-low-emission (SULEV) vehicle standard worldwide by 2005.
Beginning in the 2002 model year, General Motors will build full-size sport utility
vehicles with the E85 engine, giving it flexible fuel capability. All Chevrolet Suburbans, Tahoes, Yukons and Yukon XL’s will be able to run on varying blends of ethanol and gasoline – from 100 percent gasoline to 85 percent ethanol. The Chevy S-10 and GMC Sonoma – small pickups – went into production with flexible fuel capacity in late 1999. By the end of the 2004 model year, GM will have produced over one million trucks with flex-fuel capability. On the fuel cell front, General Motors made an announcement in May that it is partnering with Giner Inc., a fuel cell technology research firm to facilitate commercial introduction of GM’s fuel cells.
DaimlerChrysler promises that 20-30 fuel cell buses will be on the road by 2002,
followed by passenger cars in 2004. The company is investing $1 billion over the next
four years to develop mass production fuel cell vehicles. Also in 2002, the company’s
Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama will be powered by a stationary
fuel cell manufactured by its subsidiary MTU Friedrichshafen.
Hyundai Motor Company is developing a demonstration program for a fuel cell-powered
sport utility vehicle. International Fuel Cells, a subsidiary of United Technologies, is
building the power plant, Enova Systems is providing the drive train and power
management systems.
In January, Frost & Sullivan, an international marketing firm, predicted the market for
fuel cells will grow by almost 50 percent a year for the next five years.
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