Jul 24 2008
General Automotive Company, a global provider of parts, accessories and advanced technology for the automotive industry, today announced a joint venture with SenCer Inc. to develop, commercialize and market SenCer’s groundbreaking UltraTemp™ ceramic composite materials for accelerating the development of energy-efficient, environmentally friendly fuel cell technologies. The joint venture will also advance the development of next-generation oxygen sensors, which represent a significant part of GA's current business.
A Rochester, NY-based research firm known for its engineering expertise in advanced ceramic systems, SenCer has developed a series of next-generation ceramic fiber/ ceramic matrix composite materials with a wide variety of applications, including fuel cell stacks for powering automotive engines. The goal of the joint venture will be to develop a series of prototypes that will significantly advance the process of commercializing and, ultimately, mass producing fuel cells.
GA President and CEO Joseph DeFrancisci commented, “Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are widely viewed as a potential solution for higher energy prices and environmentally damaging emissions. The automotive sector, in particular, stands to reap tremendous benefits from this emerging technology as the engineering challenges that have confronted the industry to date are solved.
“SenCer’s groundbreaking technology solves the two most persistent problems in fuel cell design – cost and durability – by replacing expensive platinum conductors with co-fired proprietary ceramic conductive layers. This is a breakthrough approach, and we are pleased to position GA at the forefront of this important effort through our joint venture with SenCer, which over the last 10 years has provided research and core ceramic materials to some of the leading developers of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC).
“Additionally, the joint venture offers GA important benefits in the short term since SenCer’s ceramic composite technology is also key to the design of next-generation oxygen sensors, which constitute an important revenue stream for GA today.”
David Burt, President of SenCer and Chief Technology Officer of the new joint venture, stated, “We’re very excited about the opportunity to partner with GA, whose business start-up and marketing capabilities will be key ingredients to our success. SenCer has taken a different direction to solving problems in fuel cell design by developing our UltraTemp™ Ceramic Composite as a support system for conductive ceramic layers. Our proprietary system is field-proven to bond multiple layers for long life and at low cost at temperatures almost twice that of conventional fuel cells. In addition we have a system that can operate at temperatures much lower than traditional SOFCs, thereby providing even longer life.”
Mr. DeFrancisci concluded, “By combining SenCer’s breakthrough technology with GA’s business know-how and extensive industry contacts, we believe we can have a real impact on advancing the development and deployment of automotive fuel cell technology and on the design of more sophisticated oxygen sensors to help maximize fuel economy and minimize exhaust emissions. Cost-effective and durable fuel cell systems can provide an answer to some of the most pressing global problems, and our joint venture will help realize the tremendous potential of this field.”