In the past weeks, hydrogen fuel cell cars have been in the media again:
- Toyota revealed the FCV concept car and said costs of fuel cell vehicles have gone down from $1 million to $50.000-$100.000 in 10 years time.
- Hyundai stated that it will have a fuel cell vehicle on the market next year.
- and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, never afraid to speak his mind, called fuel cells Bullshit: “Hydrogen is quite a dangerous gas. You know, it’s suitable for the upper stage of rockets, but not for cars”.
Why are hydrogen fuel cell vehicles being developed?
The idea for hydrogen fuel cell cars has been around for decades. Automobile manufacturers and universities all over the world have experimented with the technology, trying to figure out a way to make it work. But despite these years of research and the investment of billions of dollars, the simplest and most usable solution that is currently available for a reasonable price is the battery electric car.
Advocates of hydrogen mobility keep shouting the two main benefits of hydrogen from the rooftops:
- Hey, it reduces our dependency on foreign oil, and it will never run out!
and
- Hey, you can drink from the tailpipe, because there’s zero exhaust emissions, just water!
Of course, this will get populist and short-sighted politicians on the band wagon, using the promotion of hydrogen mobility and the promise of even more billions of subsidy into the further development of hydrogen cars. This should show how savvy and involved with the environment they are, but what they are eager to forget (conceal) is that hydrogen is a backwards and utterly superfluous technology for cars. [Read more…]
General Motors has a problem in Europe. The world’s second largest automaker European Opel brand (named Vauxhall in the UK) is losing money faster than drunk guy in a strip club.
* In 2002, Mitsubishi’s US sales peaked at 345.111 vehicles, with a market share of 2%, almost twice as many as Subaru, ahead of Volkswagen and Kia, and within 30.000 units of Hyundai.
s a toddler we all played with a remote controlled toy car, always bumping into the newly painted living room wall or against your father’s toes. Believe it or not, these cars could have been your first introduction to the battery electric car. Now that we have grown older and have become accustomed to the pleasures of the internal combustion engine, some people argue that the world is ready for a true battery electric car. 
