"Oh, the humanity!" That thought ran repeatedly through my mind at Electric Drive University, GM's rolling dog-and-pony show for its pending hydrogen-powered vehicles. In this case, the humanity to mourn isn't the 36 people who perished with the Hindenberg 70 years ago, but the journalists who had to suffer through (and the GM engineers forced to present) a slew of death-by-PowerPoint sessions proving Hydrogen Is Really, Really Safe.

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At which point we got to do what we really came for, other than scarf down lunch at the ritzy Tarrytown House conference center: To drive GM's fleet of hydrogen-powered Equinox SUVs. They'll be handed off to 100 mainstream motorists and influencers in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, for three- to four-month stints over the next two years.

Curious incident of the dog in the night. In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Silver Blaze," the stable guard dog didn't react to a thief. (It didn't bark because the bad-guy horse thief was known to Fido.) Same thing with the Equinox: It drives just like a midsize SUV that happens to be converting hydrogen and oxygen into electricity to turn an electric motor instead of a thirsty gasoline engine. No flames shot out the back, just water vapor. Step on the gas, and it steps off the line smartly. Press the brakes, and you come to a stop (with a bit of drama; see below).

400 extra pounds of road-hugging carbon fiber. Electric motors deliver tremendous low-end torque, which helps a vehicle get going in a hurry. Swapping out the gasoline drivetrain for hydrogen/electric and installing three just-about-bulletproof 10,000-psi hydrogen fuel tanks made of 1.25-inch-thick carbon-fiber windings hikes this 189-inch "compact SUV" by 400 pounds, to around 4,100 pounds. GM quotes a 12-second 0-to-60-mph time; but when we exhaled a collective sigh of disappointment, a GM exec backpedaled and said that's for a non-aggressive acceleration run of an aging hydrogen Equinox, and 10 seconds to 0-to-60 might be attainable, too. My seat-of-the-pants impression was good: low-speed acceleration tapering off as speed increased. In other words, initially faster than a gas-engine Equinox, then slower, averaging out to the 10 or 12 seconds total to reach 60 mph.

Quirky power steering, brakes. Although it's mostly like a gas-engine Equinox, the hydrogen-powered version differs in a number of ways. The drive accessories are all electric. The electrically assisted power steering felt numb, and the brake-by-wire brakes lacked feedback. With these brakes, the pedal presses an electric switch, which slows the car through the resistance of power-regeneration as well as traditional brakes, and the software algorithm that provides feedback needs more work.

Our vehicle lacked stability control (GM Stabilitrak), but GM says a software upgrade will add that feature before the real customers get their hands on the fleet. GM opted to make the hydrogen Equinox front-drive only, though there are all-wheel-drive gasoline versions, and it's a simple matter (a simple matter of more weight) to snake a power line and an electric motor to the rear axle.

Improved cockpit. The base Equinox dates to 2005 and shares some technology with the Saturn Vue. GM dressed up the cockpit with spiffy fabric seats done in light blue with black-and-white insets, which looks better than it sounds. Trim on the center stack and doors is painted to match the two unique hydrogen Equinox colors—white or glacial-gold-metallic (which is silver most of the time and gold under some lights).

The instrument cluster adds a power gauge that shows consumption or energy regeneration. The center console LCD for the navigation system includes a power consumption screen much like that on a Toyota Prius, in this case showing the flow of hydrogen, electricity, regenerated electricity, and water (the exhaust product). It's sort of cool, as on the Prius, and I think it's there to impress your friends more than to impress you.