http://www.thestate.com/local/
Obama administration is planning to cut funding for hydrogen car research next year. I spent 5 years of my life developing hydrogen production technology. Should I be disappointed? 5 years down the drain?
Well not really... The premise of hydrogen was great. Imagine a city all powered up with hydrogen fuel. Bikers will not have to breath toxic truck exhausts on their way to work/ school. Pollution could be controlled by large hydrogen producing plants, improving air quality in the region and lowering GHG's emissions globally.
It seems that there are problems everywhere. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are expensive, reliability has to be improved, storage is expensive, fuel distribution is expensive.
If you compare the technology with another zero tail pipe emission one, electric cars, the choice could become obvious. Batteries needs to be improved and currently add a lot of weight to the vehicle, making them less energy efficient on highways. However, the new infrastructures required are quite small. You only need a electric outlet and a cable to "refuel" your car. Some companies are suggesting to have battery switching stations, where electric car users switch their batteries, instead of recharging and waiting hours.http://www.betterplace.
Spending billions on a hydrogen infrastructure would require making choices. I would rather like that our government spend their money cleaning up our electrical power generation and redesigning our cities to be less car dependent.
Hydrogen is still interesting for some applications. For instance, If BC ferries or rail companies like CP and CN were running on hydrogen, that could be an interesting market. These companies can have in-house capacities to operate the technologies and are large consumers enough that could justify building of a medium scale production and distribution infrastructure for them only.
