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Daniel O’Connell, GM’s director of Global Field Service Support & Infrastructure, said the explosion occurred during the commercial transport of hydrogen fuel and did not involve its fueling station or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

"I can tell you right now that we've refueled our 100 vehicle fleet over 16,000 times without any incidents at all. We have those 1.5 million miles on the cars and some of our consumers didn't trust our crash data, so, they crashed them themselves. And in all those crashes, we've had no hydrogen escape and we've had no issues with injuries to the driver or the passengers in those cars," O’Connell said.

The hydrogen fuel involved in Thursday’s explosion was trucked in for use in the GM’s hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, something O'Connell says happens more than most people realize.

He says about 100,000 gallons equivalent of hydrogen is transported around the United States everyday.

"Hydrogen is an interesting fuel. It’s used in a lot of different industries out there today. It's used in the petrochemical industry. It’s used in the chip manufacturing industry. It's used in the food industry, as well as a couple of others. So, there's a lot of it moving around out there. Learning how to do it safely is important to us, but we think that this issue is not related to the fuel cell vehicles because they're completely safe, the dispensing operation is also very safe," O’Connell said.

The pumping station at the airport remains closed while the investigation into what caused the explosion continues.

The airport is one of three locations, including the GM research and development facility in Honeoye Falls and the RIT campus where people who drive one of the eight hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the greater Rochester region fuel up.

GM says it will continue its relationship with supplier Praxair, Inc.

GM