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Toyota may have just taken the lead in a race to reduce the automotive industry's addiction to oil. Today in Japan, the auto manufacturer unveiled a car powered exclusively by hydrogen gas pumped through a fuel cell. The vehicle can travel more than 500 miles on a single tank of hydrogen, and the only byproduct produced by the car itself is water.
The car faces obstacles to widespread adoption and use by the general public, however. Toyota could find only one place in all of Washington to fill a tank with hydrogen gas, a common problem for hydrogen-cell vehicles in most cities.
As Bill Reinert of the Toyota Advanced Technology Group states, "That is the big problem. We've made more progress than society has with infrastructure to drive the car."
While they await more hydrogen stations and work on perfecting fuel cells, car companies are racing to adopt certain attractive elements of the fuel-cell vehicle for their gas-electric hybrids. In particular, new designs for hybrids include the ability to recharge the car's electric cells.
Ford is developing a plug-in car that it hopes to see on the road by 2010. They say that it will drive 30 miles on pure electricity, essentially allowing the car to attain a fuel economy of 120 miles to the gallon.
In fact, some converted hybrids are already on the roads, if not the market. David Sandalow of the Brookings Institution reports that he owns one such specialized vehicle, and that it "takes about as much electricity as a toaster... it costs me the equivalent about 75 cents a gallon to drive."
But those batteries add five thousand dollars or more to the cost of such a car. Electric car advocates hope that mass production will push prices down. As Reinert pointed out, "It doesn't do us any good to make million dollar display pieces or demo programs. We've got to make cars that everybody can afford, that everybody can drive, that are low emissions and high fuel economy."
One "all electric" car just started production: to date, just four of the Tesla sport cars have been delivered to owners. The car can reportedly accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in four seconds. Increased production, however, will not to do anything to lower the Tesla's 120 thousand dollar price tag.
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