By Kevin KrolickiLAS VEGAS (Reuters) - General Motors Corp, looking to regain momentum against Toyota Motor Corp, sees a chance to beat the Japanese automaker to market with the first zero-emission luxury car.
GM seized the spotlight at a technology conference this week to show off a hydrogen- and battery-powered Cadillac concept car designed to run up to 100 miles per hour while emitting only water vapor.
Executives said the Cadillac Provoq fuel-cell concept vehicle showed GM is serious about challenging Toyota and its Lexus luxury brand for sales to the growing number of wealthy buyers looking to make an environmental statement on the road.
"We think we'll be able to take back some of the ground that Toyota owns today," said Cadillac general manager Jim Taylor, part of a team of GM executives who unveiled the Provoq concept outside of the established circuit of auto trade shows.
Taylor said Cadillac had suffered in competition with Lexus in California and other markets because of Toyota's lead in developing fuel-saving hybrid variants and in becoming recognized as the environmentally sensitive choice.
"We've got a misperception -- particularly on the West Coast -- that we're not working on this, that we're not interested in this," Taylor said of GM.
GM's hope is that the fuel-cell powered Cadillac Provoq (pronounced "provoke") will challenge that view and build on the positive reception for the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid GM is rushing to market in another effort to beat Toyota.
The Volt and the Provoq are intended to run on GM's "E-Flex" architecture, a system the automaker is developing for a range of upcoming electrically driven vehicles.
For now, GM is sticking with an aggressive goal of selling the Volt by 2010, while also conceding that launch date could be delayed because of the challenge of developing a new generation of powerful lithium-ion batteries.
GM, like other major automakers, typically declines to specify whether concept cars like the Provoq will be turned into showroom models, a process that can take three to four years.
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But GM executives in Las Vegas this week for the Consumer Electronics Show said the largest U.S. automaker was already developing the fifth-generation fuel-cell stack needed to power the Provoq and expected to take that version into production.
GM, which believes it has a lead in fuel-cell technology, said the fuel-cell stack shown in the Provoq was half the size of its current version with more power.
GM's fourth-generation fuel-cell technology, which combines stored hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity, is being used in a test group of 100 vehicles that the automaker calls the largest experimental fleet of its kind.
Cadillac's Taylor also said GM's luxury brand represented the logical choice for the automaker's first widely available fuel-cell vehicle first because its wealthier customers were willing -- and in some cases eager -- to pay more for cutting-edge technology.
"That's been our mission as part of the GM family," Taylor said.
Historically, GM has used Cadillac to roll out a range of technologies that found wide application -- like its OnStar communications service -- and some that fizzled like night-vision, he said.
GM is not alone in pushing for a wider roll-out of fuel-cell technology that had been confined to test labs until recently. Honda Motor Co Ltd will begin leasing a small number of its FCX Clarity fuel-cell sedans to drivers in Southern California later this year for $600 per month as part of a three-year program.
"There's been a lot of process in fuel cells since we've been working on them, more than some skeptics thought," GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner told reporters.
But Wagoner cautioned that the success of fuel-cell vehicles depended on bringing down their cost and increasing the number of hydrogen refueling stations from the current handful in markets such as Los Angeles.
"Putting in a hydrogen infrastructure is going to be challenging and it's going to require some vision and leadership at the government level. Will that happen here? Maybe. Will it happen in China? Maybe," Wagoner said.
(Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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