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Honda has launched its hydrogen fuel cell test fleet, bringing the FCX Clarity to Southern California. The midsize sedan will seat four; run using electricity created on board with a fuel cell and will have zero carbon emissions. Honda announced the vehicle will initially be available this July in California and then go on the market in Japan towards the end of this year. This is wonderful news and Honda now joins General Motors and BMW in bringing hydrogen fuel cell test fleets to United States consumers.

Hopefully, these test fleets will spur the energy companies to continue expansion of hydrogen fueling stations. Hydrogen vehicles suffer from a chicken and egg problem, no one will buy cars if they can’t fuel them and no energy company will invest in hydrogen stations if there are no cars using the fuel. The chicken and egg problem of hydrogen infrastructure needs to be solved before real progress on fuel cells can be made and with each additional automaker entering the hydrogen game demand for hydrogen fuel will continue to increase.

Gasoline infrastructure has a 100 year head start on hydrogen, but each automaker investing in hydrogen narrows that lead.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 10:57 am and is filed under Editor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.