DETROIT — Larry Burns, the longtime General Motors executive who is widely considered to be the godfather of the Chevrolet Sequel fuel-cell vehicle and was an outspoken proponent of decreasing petroleum use, will retire from the automaker later this year.
"[Burns] has confirmed his plans to retire from GM later this year after 40 years with the company," said GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson in response to an e-mail query from Inside Line on Tuesday.
He passed along a statement from Burns that read: "Much of the technology developed during my tenure at R&D is ready for commercialization. This is a good time for me to pass the baton to others who are very qualified to drive technology leadership."
It was well known in Detroit that Burns' ambitious alt-fuel budget had been sharply cut as GM fought for survival in the past few months.
Burns is the brainiac executive who seemed to serve the role of Delphic oracle at GM. He consistently preached a gospel of reform and championed such concepts as GM's Autonomy, Hy-wire and Chevrolet Sequel. The Sequel is designed around hydrogen fuel-cell technology and combines a fuel cell with three electric motors and a lithium-ion battery that he said gave "jet-like acceleration characteristics."
"Sequel truly is a vehicle of the future and embodies the fundamental changes that can be realized with the new automotive DNA," he said in a keynote address entitled "Converging on Sustainability: The Time Is Now" at Convergence 2006 in Detroit.
He added: "The automobile's transformation from a stand-alone, largely mechanical device to one that is electrical and connected will be every bit as momentous as the transition from horses to horsepower."
Burns pictured a day when "we would be wirelessly tethered to our cars, and use the information-processing capability on the vehicle while this capacity is also connected to a global computing grid."
Word of the executive's retirement may indicate that GM may be veering away from a soaring fuel-cell vision, however — or at least delaying a major investment. On Monday, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz made this remark in a Web chat on the GM FastLane blog: "If we believe in the ultimate electrification of the automobile, we have to maintain our commitment to batteries and elec [sic] drive systems. This means hybrids and Volt-like vehicles. Fuel cells are a bit farther out."
Earlier this year, Burns helped to showcase GM and Segway's Project PUMA, an electric two-wheel car for urban driving. Burns said the idea could reinvent urban transportation. But such publications as Business Week dismissed it as "a pie-in-the-sky science project that will go nowhere."
It is not clear what Burns plans to do after leaving General Motors.
Inside Line says: No one is saying as much, but Burns and his post-internal-combustion-engine world appear to be one of the casualties in a post-bankruptcy era at GM. — Anita Lienert, Correspondent
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