I find it strange that we’re willing to invest so much time, energy, and money into developing an infrastructure for corn ethanol. And at the same time, when industry talks about hydrogen, they claim that it isn’t realistic because there is no infrastructure. Interestingly, its a lie. Hydrogen is common industrial gas; there are several companies operating in America to the tune of several billion/year in revenues that truck and pipe hydrogen all over the country already.

Europe’s moving to hydrogen where it can, particularly in city buses. The Germans even have a nifty ship that goes out to sea; points itself into the wind; and uses turbines on the deck to power electrolysis in the hold. When the ship’s full, it returns to port and offloads hydrogen.

Last time i heard, the power plant in GM’s theoretical fuel-cell vehicle (the Hywire) was capable of lighting up 10 city blocks. Of course, for GM its theoretical and at least a decade away. Not so for Honda. The FSX is available for lease this summer (at least in California) It gets 350 miles on a tank of hydrogen. In full production, it will come with a home hydrogen generation station that will also power your house. The first generation is natural gas powered, but apparently they plan make the station electrolysis capable and powered by wind/solar.

Oddly enough, the FSX should be readily available by (or before) 2014…exactly 100 years after Henry Ford and Thomas Edison nearly pulled off presenting the world with an affordable, electric vehicle. And that project tied into Edison’s ideal of getting everyone off the grid. (These were his two major projects in the works when his campus burned down)

Some of this comment stems from having recently read “Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives”, by Edwin Black. The title makes it sound like an angry polemic…but it isn’t. It is a pretty straight forward – and fascinating – history.