GM Plans For 1,000 Fuel-Cell Cars In California By 2014 - Reuters

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SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - General Motors Corp plans to have 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California between 2012 to 2014 to comply with the state's goal to put thousands of cleaner cars on its roads.

GM has about 60 Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell vehicles in Southern California now, the automaker's vice president for research & development and planning, Larry Burns, said at the National Hydrogen Association conference here. "The next logical play for us is to take that up to a car scale of about 1,000," Burns said in an interview.

With 1,000 cars, GM will be "in the ballpark" of meeting its share of the 7,500 zero-emissions cars California wants on its roads between 2012 and 2014, Burns said.

He said GM would also have enough fuel cell cars on the road to amass statistics on the technology's durability. As the number of hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road increases, Burns said there would be a "tipping point" toward mainstream acceptance and financial viability for its fuel cell vehicles in 2017 or 2018.

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