Why are we spending billions to develop Hydrogen fuel cell cars, which is a big unknown, when we have the technology to develop better and more effiecient Electric cars? Zero emissions car available, TODAY! Tesla motor was able to make a car to go 250 miles on a single charge. Image the possiblities if we invested further money into the technology and rid ourselves of the dependency of foreign oil. Energy concerns can also be addressed with new developments from solar, wind and water sources. With Hydrogen cars you are dealing with unknowns and there's no way of telling when they would be ready for production. Even when it is ready, how are people going to get the hydrogen fuel. I'm sure the big oil companies will be more than happy to control the distribution on that as well.
——-
You are so correct. The battery electric vehicle is the closest-to-reality alternative fuel technology we have, and this is where the research dolars belong, not in fuel cells (which are essentially less-efficient electric vehicles).
*
The clearest way to show this is with a couple of examples. GM's prototype fuel-cell car, the Equinox, has a 300-mile driving range – but the car weighs over 4,000 pounds!
*
Contrast this to the Tesla electric sports car – it weighs maybe half that much – and has a range of 250 miles. If we added 2,000 pounds of additional batteries to the Tesla, it would have a driving range of nearly 1,000 miles!
*
So which looks like the more viable technology?
*
Despite lack of government funding, EV research has not stood still. Here's a new EV (out next year) that can charge its batteries in 10 minutes, and drive for up to 200 miles per charge:
*
http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com
*
Don't believe the disinfo about electric cars polluting. Electric motors are several times more efficient than gas engines. Power plants burn fuel at much higher efficiency than your gas car does. And distributing electricity by wire is far, far more efficient than trucking fuel around the countryside.
*
All these efficiency improvements mean that the EV can travel further on less energy. That means much less pollution per mile, no matter what the power plants burn. Plus, a decent percentage of electricity is now made from non-polluting sources.
*
It's absurdly easy to prove the efficiency argument by looking at fuel costs. It only costs about a tenth as much (in electricity costs, compared to gasoline) to go an equivalent distance in an EV versus a conventional vehicle.
——–