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Hydrogen Fuel Powered Cross Country Parade

Posted on: Monday, 25 August 2008, 07:05 CDT

A 13-day cross-country trip showcased hydrogen fuel cell cars from nine automakers, marking the first widely acknowledged contest for vehicles powered with zero-emission technology.

The event, dubbed the "Hydrogen Road Tour '08", started in Portland, Maine and ended in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The vehicles were carried on flatbed trucks, the longest span from Rolla, Missouri, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, due to stretches without hydrogen fueling stations.

The focus was to demonstrate the need to build more fueling stations if the nascent technology is to develop, said Paul Brubaker, administrator for research and innovative technology for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Currently in the United States, there are about 60 hydrogen stations, and only two are open to the public without prior arrangement.

Backers of the 18 state tour included two hydrogen producers, Air Products and Linde, which hope to become major players if hydrogen becomes a key to transportation.

Catherine Dunwoody, executive director of major tour supporter California Fuel Cell Partnership, said fueling stations will appear in big cities first, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C.

"There's a lot of curiosity about these vehicles," Dunwoody said near the finish line in Los Angeles on Saturday . "As we got to Allentown, Pennsylvania, people lined up and cheered."

Dunwoody's partnership is based near California's capital, Sacramento, and funded by public and private funds.

"There's a hunger out there for clean, safe vehicles," Brubaker said. "The common refrain everywhere we went was 'Where do we get these cars.'"

It could take awhile before hydrogen fuel cells become an everyday sight. Honda Motor Co has begun leasing about 200 FXC Clarity fuel-cell autos in Southern California and General Motors Corp is testing about 100 fuel-cell Chevy Equinox SUVs on the road.



Carmakers have spent billions to develop hydrogen technology in hopes of capitalizing on a public desire to buy cleaner cars and a U.S. push to cuts ties with foreign oil.

A quarter of the world's oil is consumed in the U.S.

Cars and trucks consume 44 percent of oil used in the country and contribute about a fifth of the carbon dioxide emissions. CO2 makes up nearly 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Automakers will only sell about 2 million electric vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells by 2020, a study by the National Research Council found.

Cars on the 31-city tour came from Honda, GM, Toyota Motor Corp, Ford Motor Co, BMW AG, Daimler AG, Hyundai Motor Co, Nissan Motor Co, and Volkswagen AG.

Brubaker came up with idea for the tour when he watched a Ken Burns documentary, "Horatio's Drive," while reading a biography of Dwight Eisenhower.

Burns documented the 1903 drive of Horatio Nelson Jackson who crossed the U.S. in a 20-horsepower Winton car hoping to be the first to make the trip in an automobile. His journey from San Francisco to New York started as a bet, and took 64 days.

The Eisenhower biography mentioned the future president's cross-country trip as a young man. At the time he noticed long stretches of unpaved roads. When Eisenhower became president in the 1950s, he started the U.S. interstate highway system.


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On the Net:

Air Products

The Linde Group

Source: redOrbit staff

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