General Motors' HydroGen3 To Power FedEx

TOKYO December 18, 2002; Kae Inoue and Lindsay Whipp writing for Bloomberg Reported that FedEx Corp., the largest overnight delivery company, will use General Motors Corp.'s fuel cell vehicle to deliver mail in Tokyo, enabling the world's biggest automaker to test the car under genuine conditions.

The company will use the auto, based on General Motors' HydroGen3 prototype car, between June 2003 and June 2004, the companies said in a joint statement. FedEx will use the vehicle without payment in the first test by a private company in Japan, the companies said.

General Motors and other automakers are investing billions of dollars to develop autos that meet stricter environmental rules. Fuel cells, used in spacecraft for decades, create electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, and under ideal conditions produce only steam as a byproduct.

"We will only make a difference if we can sell (fuel cell) vehicles in large volumes," said Raymond Grigg, President and Chief Executive Officer of GM Asia Pacific (Japan) in a statement. "We've made great strides in bringing the cost down. It's still ten times too expensive."

The HydroGen3 is based on the Opel Zafira minivan, powered by a low-pollution fuel cell engine.

Rivals Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. leased their own fuel cell vehicles to Japanese government agencies earlier this month.