Questions for Peter Hoffmann: A Hydrogen Advocate Whose Time May Have Come
Share with others:
Peter Hoffmann started what is now the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Letter in 1986 and is the author of two books on this potential energy carrier for automobiles. "Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet" was published in 2001, but a revised and expanded edition is scheduled to be available from M.I.T. Press in March.
Advocating for hydrogen cars has been, at times, a lonely profession, because fuel-cell vehicles have long been just around the next bend. But several major automakers have committed in recent months to hydrogen car production by 2015. The cars and the hydrogen are likely to be expensive in the early years, but Mr. Hoffmann, a native of Germany, and other advocates expect those costs to decrease as production ramps up and technology matures.
Fuel-cell cars are regarded as zero emission because they don't emit anything but water vapor from their tailpipes.They use the same basic drivetrains as electric vehicles, but in lieu of batteries they substitute a fuel-cell chemical factory that produces electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen.
Q. The California Air Resources Board just approved new regulations designed to put 500,000 zero-emission cars on the road by 2025. More than 160,000 of those vehicles would be hydrogen fuel-cell cars in one scenario. The regulations also require oil companies to build hydrogen refueling stations. Is this a big leap forward?
A. I certainly hope so -- it's definitely a step along the way. The Japanese and Europeans (and especially the Germans) are setting up similar schemes supporting collaborations between carmakers and fuel providers to set up hydrogen stations. In those cases, there's a lot of government money involved.
Q. California would seem to be the epicenter of fuel-cell deployment in the United States, but even in Los Angeles today there are only a few public stations. Will there be a network in place by the time automakers roll out the first commercial fuel-cell cars in 2015?
First Published February 3, 2012 12:01 am
