AFS-ASM-SAE Joint Meeting
Speaker: Sara Stabenow
5-Oct-2017
Zehnder’s of Frankenmuth
Town Hall (downstairs),
Frankenmuth, MI
6:00 PM Social Hour
7:00 PM Dinner
8:00 PM Program
Sara Stabenow was recently featured in a Design News Article on 15 engineers who are transforming the auto industry. She joined GM as a summer intern at the Casting Development and Validation Center, then moved into Transmission and Hybrid Materials Engineering after completing her BS and MS in Materials Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University in 2002. Sara helped develop GM’s electric motor manufacturing processes before joining the fuel cell program in 2013. She is currently the program manager for the Fuel Cell Product Execution Team and Technology Collaboration.
Presentation Abstract
After seven years of on-road experience with a fleet of Chevrolet Equinoxes that amassed more than 3 million miles, General Motors is literally branching out – as in military branches – to explore fuel cell applications on land, sea and air. Two demonstration programs – the Chevrolet Colorado-based ZH2 fuel cell electric vehicle demonstrator for the Army and the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) for the Navy – are under way. The possibility of aerospace applications for fuel cells are drawing near.
GM and Honda in January announced Fuel Cell Manufacturing, a joint venture that will mass produce fuel cell systems around 2020 that will be used by the two companies in distinct products. The new system will be more powerful and compact, while using dramatically less platinum and other precious metals than the system that powered the 119 Equinoxes in the Project Driveway program,
Fuel cells address two major automotive energy and environmental challenges: petroleum use and carbon dioxide and other polluting emissions. While most hydrogen today comes as a byproduct of natural gas, because hydrogen is so plentiful, it can come from renewable sources including wind and solar and be stored for later use.