Just because Honda and General Motors are competitors doesn't mean they can't rev up their engines together for the greater good of the auto industry.
Reuters is reporting that the Honda is in talks with GM over manufacturing and attaining parts for hydrogen fuel cell stacks, continuing the automakers' technology partnership.
That's right, continuing. Within the same report, the news agency revealed that Honda and GM have been working together on developing fuel cell technology since 2013.
This latest announcement, which was made by Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo on Thursday, comes on the heels of the automaker launching its Clarity hydrogen fuel cell in Japan. So, continuing to collaborate with GM could pave the way for the technology to be cheaper in the future, perhaps enabling Honda to sell more of that model worldwide.
The collaboration should aid each company in that both Honda and GM will be able to come up with a more cost-effective way of manufacturing and attaining the parts necessary for hydrogren fuel cell stacks, perhaps even leading the auto industry's push for more eco-friendly vehicles. After all, despite being competitors, there's strength in numbers.
Honda working with GM seemingly allows each company to also have an edge over Toyota and Hyundai, which are each developing fuel cell vehicles as well.
In the past, Honda said that its first mass-produced fuel cell vehicle, the Clarity, will be powered by hydrogen, delivering a driving range of up to 466 miles, while touting zero emissions for the price of $67,000 starting in Japan, before being available in California for $60,000 by the end of this year, as reported by Bloomberg.
Seeing the diesel emissions crisis that Volkswagen continues to trudge through, it's especially significant that key automakers such as Honda, Toyota and GM are looking into ways of bringing costs of fuel cell technology down so that more of the public embraces and adopts it as soon as possible.
As fuel cell technology grows, though, automakers will need to figure out ways to sprout more hydrogen stations — but one step at a time.
Let's see what Honda and GM come back with first as a result of their continued collaboration.
