Hydrogen Bus Fleet

So, is there a hydrogen bus fleet or a hydrogen highway? Not yet! But there will be soon in British Columbia. There is an $89 million project to develop a fleet of 20 hydrogen fuelled buses and fulling stations in Whistler, Vancouver, and Victoria to supply the "hydrogen highway". The plan is to have it operational for showcasing at the 2010 Olympics. In fact, in cooperation with the United States the highway is planned to be operational all the way to San Diego by 2010. There is a short article about it here at CBC.

Hydrogen fulled vehicles are ZEVs, which are zero-emission vehicles. The only by-products are pure water and heat. The only problem with them at the moment is that we produce hydrogen using methods that do pollute during the production process. However, if we do get the distribution infrastructure and the vehicles put in place, the production method could be altered to a more environmentally friendly method. This seems to be the most feasible approach to me, one step at a time. It would be impractical to move to alternate production methods before a market has been developed.

So how long until hydrogen vehicles are in the hands of the average consumer? There are prototypes out there, and the big companies are going to be showing them off in the near future. Considering the momentum that concern over climate change is imparting to environmentally friendly technological change now, perhaps we'll see them a lot sooner than most of us originally thought! I'll see if I can round up some of the news on the prototypes that are out there and do a little summary in an upcoming yeti tracks. See you out there!