The big breakthrough that GM is bragging about is that at 20 below zero, this fuel cell can develop full power in just 30 seconds. It used to take 6 minutes to do that. But all major automakers are scrambling to bring out fuel cell cars as fast as they can. They all pretty much claim they'll have them in showrooms by 2004. Even so, they all have a lot of work in front of them before these cars will be ready for sale.
Fuel cells create electricity through a chemical process.
They take hydrogen and run it by a membrane that allows protons to pass through, but not the electrons. That creates an unstable condition and the electrons race around a passageway inside the fuel cell to join up with the protons. That flow of electrons is electricity, and it's used to power an electric motor that drives the car. Right now the car companies would like to use methanol as the fuel. They can extract the hydrogen they need from the methanol.