Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell Wins 2008 Green Car Vision Award

The Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell has been honored with Green Car Journal's Green Car Vision Award™, the first time the magazine has recognized a limited production vehicle for its forward-thinking technologies. The award was presented to Beth Lowerey, GM's vice-president of Environment and Energy, during a press conference at the 2008 Washington Auto Show.

Featuring General Motors' fourth-generation fuel cell propulsion system, the Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell won out over fellow nominees including the BMW Hydrogen 7, Honda FCX Clarity, Phoenix Electric SUT, and Toyota Prius Plug-In. Nominees represent a variety of technologies and fuels including hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen internal combustion, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric drive.

The Green Car Vision Award™ is an important addition to Green Car Journal's respected Green Car Award™ program. For the past three years, the magazine's Green Car of the Year® award has honored the one full production vehicle that makes the most significant environmental advancements. Green Car of the Year® by nature recognizes vehicles that are on sale now. The ability to buy vehicles with better environmental performance today allows drivers to make real-time contributions to a better world, every mile they drive. This isn't possible if a vehicle is unavailable to consumers, regardless of its potential benefits.

Still, the rising stars of the future that are championing fuels and technologies holding extraordinary promise to change the face of personal mobility deserve to be recognized and encouraged to market. This is the focus of the magazine's new Green Car Vision Award™.

To be considered for this award, vehicles must be in small volume production with more than one functional prototype in existence. They may be in the early stages of commercialization. Vehicles considered may also be part of a demonstration fleet or other program that finds them regularly driven by people other than employees of their manufacturer. In addition, a nominee may be a modification of an existing vehicle model, such as a conversion to another type of power like electric drive.

Narrowing down choices to a final five nominees was challenging. Many companies are actively engaged in the process of developing highly advanced, environmentally positive vehicles that use electric power, alcohol fuels, hydrogen, and other fuels and technologies. Numerous demonstration programs are in place. Ultimately, five Green Car Vision Award™ candidates emerged that stood above their peers ... in some cases because of technology, and in others a combination of advanced technologies, fuels, and a demonstration program offering a scope and dynamic that stood above its competition. In all cases it was vision that set these nominees apart ... the very essence of what the Green Car Vision Award™ program is all about.

After weighing the achievements and importance of these vehicles, jurors felt that one vehicle stood out as a natural leader in this pack: Chevrolet's Equinox Fuel Cell. This advanced vehicle brings to the highway an efficient powerplant that offers zero emissions, no CO2 greenhouse gases, and highly efficient conversion of its fuel to motive power. It also benefits from 40 years of research and development, building upon the engineering of other high-profile prototypes that have come before it and achieving near seamless operation with its space-age powerplant and electro-mechanical systems. It feels familiar to drive, even as its powerplant works in ways that that are unfamiliar to most drivers.

This familiar feel is important. The Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell is part of an extensive demonstration program that will find 100 such vehicles being driven by consumers and fleets for three months at a time in California, New York City, and Washington DC. Their experience behind the wheel will advance the cause of hydrogen vehicles considerably.

Zero-emission vehicles destined for our highways in the years ahead will take many forms, from small car platforms to large. Powering a popular crossover model with a future fuel such as hydrogen, and doing so seamlessly with an efficient and environmentally positive powerplant, is exemplary. Plus, the Equinox Fuel Cell combines its hydrogen powertrain with some of today's most sought-after items like OnStar, StabiliTrac, front and roof rail side-impact air bags, and four wheel ABS. This makes the Equinox Fuel Cell not only environmentally positive but feature laden as well, an attribute that will bode well with environmentally conscious new car buyers in the future.