Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell By 2015
Well it appears to be official! With a new rollout of next generation Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell test cars, GM is one step closer to their plans of a production Fuel Cell Vehicle (FCV) by 2015. GM has been testing a hundred of the Chevy Equinox Hydrogen Fuel Cell test cars in the United States since 2008, in a little talked about study to improve the longevity of the hydrogen fuel cells.
The fuel cells in the original Chevy Equinox test vehicles had bee seeing a service life of around 50,000 miles. GM just rolled out a new version of the Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell model for a consumer test, and expect (or hope?) that this one sees 100,000 miles. In addition to the longer service life, the new equinox fuel cell is half the size, 220 pounds lighter AND uses one third the amount of platinum than the previous fuel cell. This appears to be a big breakthrough as size and weight has been an issue for fuel cells, and of course much less platinum helps drive costs lower. Hopefully this will help lower the cost to the consumer when the Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicle (FCV) finally comes to mass production. With the smaller sized fuel cell, it will be possible to roll the fuel cell out to smaller vehicles as well.
Well done GM!
Chevy Equinox Sales Double
Chevy Equinox February 2010 sales showed what we already knew, this is one hot crossover SUV! General Motors announced improved overall sales for February, with an increase of 32% over last year. But the big numbers came from their popular Chevy Equinox, with a huge sales increase of 121 percent over February of last year! Sweetness.
This was the fifth consecutive month of year over year retail sales growth for General Motors four brands, indicating the economy is picking up and helping GM get back to firmer financial footing. But again, the big winners were the Chevy Equinox, the GMC Terrain, and the Cadillac SRX, which had a combined sales increase of 198% over same period last year! This is the seventh month in a row that these three vehicles have had increases of greater than 100%. Wow!
GM feels that these three vehicles, and especially the Chevy Equinox, have what consumers are looking for in a new vehicle: fuel economy, styling, quality build, and the security of OnStar.
So, overall things are looking pretty good for General Motors and especially their crossover segment, which include the Chevy Equinox. Their news release today didn’t give out detailed sales figures like the other automakers which is kind of weird. Would like to see full details on the Chevy Equinox numbers and comparisons. As I said in my previous post, I hope that GM can get their Equinox production capacity issues resolved quickly. If they can, I suspect there will be many more months of triple digit sales gains for the Chevy Equinox.
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Chevy Equinox Pictures