Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The California Fuel Cell Partnership

Vehicles

Fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles that make electricity onboard from hydrogen and oxygen. Today, fuel cell vehicles are pre-commercial--they are not yet for sale. Hundreds of demonstration fuel cell vehicles are on the road in California, with real people driving and riding in them for work and pleasure.

Click the pictures below to learn more about the vehicles.

Chevy Equinox
Chevy Equinox
Daimler F-Cell
FCX Clarity
GM HydroGen3
Hyundai
Kia
Nissan
Toyota
Volkswagen

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:13 PM

    Very interesting...do you have any more current information regarding the effect the slumping economy has had on the startup efforts of GM (and of course the others)?

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  2. I would assume that none of the car manufacturers are eager to make any big capital investment in new plant when it is all they can to avoid bankruptcy with current operations.

    BUT the regulatory environment has improved dramatically for developing fuel cell powered cars. It is a long step from an administration headed by two oil company executives and a Congress eager to listen to oil companies and Arab producers.

    Even so, my impression is that the main difficulty is not as much ramping up production of the cars so much as it is the building of the infrastructure of a network for the production and distribution of hydrogen.

    Hydrogen is essentially a chemical battery. One uses electrical power to dissociate water into oxygen and hydrogen. The fuel cell recombines the hydrogen with oxygen back into water and extracts the resulting electrical power.

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