Taking the future for a drive

California family is the first in world to drive a car powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
The New York Times
Photos: Hydrogen hits the road

The story "Taking the future for a drive" published November 2, 2005 at 7:26 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[C.Schroeder]

How to get hybrids and fuel cells on the fast track...

Historically, auto racing has been a major driver for automobile innovation. Nascar should switch to advanced hybrid engines and Indy racers should switch to hydrogen fuel cells.

crash....

what would happen if one of those cars crashed? i'm sure that would slow the progress of driving these cars a little....

The Myth of the Hydrogen Economy

After all this work and it weighs 4000 lbs? I guess they were going after the heavy vehicle tax rebate. Hydrogen will never make it - the safety requirements result in a package that doesn't travel well. H2 is very hard on materials. Steel becomes embrittled and micro-cracks become a hazard. The processes for creating hydrogen, storing it, and delivery consume far more energy than competing technologies. It just moves the pollution somewhere else. A fuel-cell requires extremes of purity and cleanliness. A car is simply a moble power plant. Hydrogen needs to prove itself in a stationary application before putting it on the road (like steam, diesel, etc).

[Blito]

Another scam for the uninformed populace

They had 500 cars running on WATER fuel cells in
Sweden in the 1960s but the petrol companies
stopped that pretty quick.
Also don't forget Air power fuel cells.

It might be feesable to extract Hydrogen cleanly
but I, like you, think that it is just another
carefully controlled government coverup and scam.
Fuel should be free at this point. Especially if
it's was water based.

A Good Idea, but. . .

Until we have a cheap, scalable method of
mass-producting hydrogen, the whole subject
is far-away R&D. I mean, we need to develop
hydrogen fuel cells (methane fuel cells would
be better, of course), and this is a very
interesting science project, but as long as
hydrogen is being made out of fossil fuel, it
is nowhere close to being a solution to the
world's eneryg problems.

The political problems arise from the Bush
administration pointing to projects like this
and saying "See, help is one the way. We don't
have to do anything else. Just relax and wait
for the hydrogen economy to arrive."
Like many of the current administration's
policies, this is cynical and irresponsible.

[bobj123]

Decades Away...

Hydrogen will not come to pass until today's means of fuel are truely overpriced. That simple.

[Mendz]

Long time slow coming...

I've been reading about hydrogen cars since I was a kid. It is time for people to consider hydrogen as a serious alternative, if not a replacement, to oil based fuel.

There are prototypes of hybrid hydrogen-electric cars. There are also prototypes of semi-self-refuelling hybrid hydrogen-electric cars where the hydrogen tank uses a special material to absorb free hydrogen in the atmosphere and/or to create them from the engine's steam exhaust and water vapor in the air.

They're all in the making... political, economic and practical limitations keep them from really kicking off... Sigh...