Honda to produce fuel cell car in three to four years

How and where would you refuel this?

*That* has got to be the big question. If they can make it work well in trials maybe the Feds would start infrastructure building in several large cities?

More likely Honda itself would fund some refueling stations to get the ball rolling.

Why don't we just use biodiesel and ethanol... 90% of the infrastructure already exists, and a large portion of the vehicles on the road already support it.

If Honda builds it, they (oil companies, with usable fuel) will come immediately. Could be a shame--unless the oil cos. plan to phase out higher-priced oil for cheaper, yet still morally-profitable, alternative fuel. s

Absolute rubbish. You can fuel a car today off hydrogen - hydrogen will burn in a piston engine and produce power just like gasoline, with a lot less combustion byproducts. A hell of a lot of what an engine computer does is control the gasoline burn to achieve lowest emissions - you don't have to do that in a hydrogen car. Hydrogen also does not dirty up your motor oil, either.

But despite that nobody has rushed forward to create a distribution network.

The oil companies also already produce a lot of hydrogen, anyone can buy it just go down to the gas distributor. After all, half of the worlds supply of hydrogen is produced from Natural Gas.

Ted

The cost will be even more than the expensive to buy and maintain hybrids. I live 1/2 Km from Ballard and I'm up to date on this fuel cell technology.

A few months ago I discussed this subject with a fellow engineer and we agreed, "why not just burn the hydrogen in an IC engine".

GM has a vehicle that does just that, but as an engineer you should easily be able to figure our why no manufacture is offering one for sale today ;)

mike hunt