Timothy J. Seppala, @timseppala 04.05.17 in Transportation
The military isn’t put off by the high price of hydrogen-fueled vehicles and their lack of charging infrastructure.
Project Driveway in 2008 was a 30-month pilot program to glean data from drivers in New York, Washington, D.C. and California (a fuel-cell haven) on how the alternative-fuel SUV performed in the real world. That accumulated data helped pave the way to a partnership between GM and Honda in 2013, and earlier this year, a $170 million joint investment in a fuel-cell-production plant near Detroit.
Last year, GM engineers were able to shrink the size of an HFC power plant and fit it under a customized Colorado ZR2 hood…
Those giant intakes you see behind the rear doors don’t just look radical — they serve a functional purpose, feeding the 1,000-pound-per-foot-of-torque propulsion system plenty of air for cooling. The ports are designed in such a way that even when the ZH2 is standing still (say, being used as a generator) they can still suck in enough air to keep the truck from overheating.
See the full article and video here: https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/05/chevy-colorado-zh2-interview/