A few months ago in Detroit, GM introduced an an electric-dominant plug-in hybrid that would recharge overnight when you plugged it into a regular household outlet. Currently, GM has announced a new breakthrough in Shanghai. This is a hydrogen fuel-cell approach for the Volt, which it’s dubbing the second variant of the E-Flex system. That’s a mouthful. It would combine “GM’s new fifth-generation fuel-cell propulsion technology” and a lithium-ion battery. For those of you who’ve been following the Volt story, you know GM hasn’t quite got that battery yet. It’s betting it will be developed in time for the Volt to be delivered around 2009 or 2010.

The big difference with the fuel cell is that this car will not use any gas; the earlier version used a gas engine to charge the battery when the electric charge ran out. The fuel-cell version, GM says, will still plug in to a household outlet and should go about 300 miles of, as they say, “petroleum- and emissions-free electric driving.”

GM describes this as the fifth-generation fuel-cell system is only half the size of its previous fuel-cell system, something that offers even more hope for the future as engineers find ways to make these systems smaller, lighter and more efficient. GM further adds that these advancements mean fuel cells should be taken seriously as a power source for the future.

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