Hydrogen or hot air?
Is hydrogen losing air?
I normally don’t read the ‘Wheels’ section of The Saturday Star. For a few months, it made for great puppy-training paper. Now its back to going straight into the recycling bin. I’m not a car guy. I don’t own a car, and I don’t care to anytime soon. However, the cover of the section last weekend did grab my attention. What followed was a great review of the status of hydrogen cars.
The reason for the review was likely due to last month’s announcement of the Honda FCX Clarity, the world’s first production fuel-cell car. The article gets into some technical comparisons of the offerings between Honda and BMW’s offerings, but concludes with a very familiar issue to anyone who has ever read anything about the challenges of the hydrogen economy (infrastructure).
According to H2stations.org, a website that tracks hydrogen refilling stations, there are only 10 certified filling stations in Canada (and those are used for industrial purposes), 38 in Europe and 49 in the U.S. (with more than half in California).
The solution: legislate higher fuel economy regulations to encourage the move towards these new technologies. The cost of burning fossil fuels isn’t high enough to cause a change in the market. Until the full cost of emissions is born into the price, there will be no incentive to change from current practices, and hydrogen-fueled cars will remain a novelty for the super-rich and those passionately dedicated to the environmental cause (or as Geoffrey Moore described them, the technology enthusiasts and visionaries).
Kevin currently manages initial client engagements with the MaRS Venture Group. He also administers a federal fund that provides mentorship to start-up companies across Ontario.