There has been a lot of talk recently about the advantages of hydrogen fuel cells. Most of this talk has been driven by what is called the Hydrogen Road Show initiated by, surprise, the National Hydrogen Association. I remember many years ago when the first fleet of cars running on hydrogen fuel cells were let loose on the streets of Washington. At the time Washington had one of the first few hydrogen fueling stations in the country at the Shell station on Benning Road. It was all very cool but very wonky as the cars sat on side streets in the shadow of the Capitol dome with their hoods up. MIT-type scientists pondered these cars and their engine compartments the same way they might look at the propulsion system for the Mars lander.
At the time, gas prices were about half of what they are now and that war in Iraq was still promising (at least somebody was) that the supply of oil would go up and the price at the pump would go down. Suffice it to say that the desperate need for this new technology to free the nation from its dependency on foreign oil wasn't the main selling point. Instead it was all about the emissions or lack thereof. Yes, there was the guy who put a beaker at the exhaust pipe of one of the cars and later took a drink of the fluid that came out. But one of the recent knocks on hydrogen has been that it costs more energy to create the heat needed to create the reaction necessary to separate out the hydrogen atoms. Some of those problems are being reduced as the demand increases. Another knock was that the fuel cells could not hold enough hydrogen to allow for more than 100 miles or so of travel. That issue has been negated by improvements in storage technology and that does not necessarily involve compacting the hydrogen so tightly that it becomes more like a bomb than a car.
One of the companies that is really making advances is Honda, the same company that advanced hybrid technology with its Insight vehicle. Honda's FCX Clarity uses four kilograms of hydrogen to power the vehicle 270 miles. A company called Global Hydrogen Incorporated says that one kilogram of hydrogen fuel is the equivalent of one gallon of gasoline. It also says that a kilo of hydrogen (insert Cheech and Chong joke here) costs about $2.50. That mean the FCX Clarity, which looks about the same size as a Civic model, can go 270 miles for ten dollars. Even in a gasoline car that gets 40 miles to a gallon the cost would be about $25. That's quite a savings and is the kind of thing that might convince many drivers to make the leap. If the feds would enact the kind of tax breaks and locals would allow for HOV use like they did to stimulate sales of hybrids then these things might really take off, even at what promises to be rather high prices. The Honda model is available for lease to a limited few, many of them celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis.
The other thing that I though would be a huge selling point for these hydrogen vehicles when they were first shown was that they were totally quiet. I remember pointing my radio microphone at the tail pipe as the car pulled away from the curb and hearing nothing. I really thought the lack of noise would be a good thing but apparently I was wrong. Several disability groups have pointed out that hybrid vehicles are a danger to blind pedestrians because they don't provide the noise clues necessary to alert these pedestrians that a car is present. In response to that Lotus, the company better know for sleek but loud sports cars, has come up with a solution. Lotus has designed what it calls the "Safe and Sound" system. These system involves a front mounted speaker and a sound generator. What sort of sound gets generated? Why, the sound of an engine of course. Yep, these nice and quiet cars can be made noisy and therefore "visible" thanks to front-facing speakers. Yet another problem solved.
Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.
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