GM, Honda team up for hydrogen fuel-cell cars

General Motors (GM) and Honda will develop and share a hydrogen fuel cell for vehicles they would produce around the end of the decade, the automakers announced Tuesday.

Speaking in Manhattan, GM's vice chairman, Stephen Girsky, and the president of American Honda, Tetsuo Iwamura, said that by collaborating on a common design and components, they would lower costs and reduce development time.

GM and Honda - considered industry leaders in fuel-cell technology -said they would also work with energy suppliers and state and local governments to expand the network of hydrogen refueling stations, a critical element in fostering consumer acceptance of fuel-cell vehicles. Fuel cells also are expected to play an important role in the federal fuel economy regulations set for 2017 to 2025.

A section of those rules allows each fuel-cell vehicle to count as 1.75 conventional vehicles in 2020 and 1.5 vehicles in 2021.

Such credits enable automakers to somewhat offset the fuel economy of less-efficient vehicles like sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and large trucks.