Back in 1905 – gas stations were the newest thing…
The first one in the world was built that year in St. Louis, Missouri.
Now, over a century later… the latest U-S Census found there are more than 117-thousand gas stations across the country.
And these days the newest thing in filling stations is hydrogen, as NHPR Correspondent Shannon Mullen reports.
MULLEN: The first hydrogen fueling pump in the country opened four years ago, at a gas station in Washington D.C.
This week, number 62 opened at the hydrogen-power research and development company Nuvera, in Billerica, Massachusetts.
The first car to fill up – a Mercedes with an electric engine powered by a fuel cells – one of the clean alternatives to combustion.
AMBI: pull that off… just turn the handle… there you go…
MULLEN: The car is part of the Hydrogen Road Tour - a first-ever convoy of fuel cell cars traveling cross-country to show consumers and politicians, that after long years in the lab, hydrogen technology is ready for the road.
SERFASS: 31 different stops in 18 states, going from Portland, Maine to West LA/Santa Monica.
MULLEN: Patrick Serfass is spokesman for the National Hydrogen Association, one of the tour’s sponsors.
SERFASS: During the road tour the vehicles will be traveling a cumulative 24 thousand miles, all on hydrogen.
MULLEN: The catch is – there are still so few filling stations, the tour had to bring along its own portable one… and buy carbon credits to offset the CO2 from the trucks lugging it across the country.
Serfass says, while 62 re-fueling stations in 4 years is progress, it’s far short of the number needed to really roll out this technology.
SERFASS: So we’re trying to draw attention to the fact that we need more vehicles and more fueling stations, but at the same place, at the same time, so that fueling can be convenient for the customers.
MULLEN: Fuel cell cars are two to three times more efficient than their gas-powered counterparts.
In a fuel cell engine, hydrogen combines with oxygen from the air, and the reaction makes electricity to power the car’s battery.
The only byproduct?
SOT: “…instead of carbon dioxide… it produces water”
MULLEN: Most of the major auto manufacturers have fuel cell programs… 9 of them are sponsoring the national tour, including…
SOT: “the BMW Hydrogen 7. Ready for the world when the world is ready…”
MULLEN: General Motors also has a hydrogen test fleet with fuel cell cars in consumers’ driveways on both coasts.
And Honda started leasing its hydrogen model in California last month.
The automakers seem to be moving first, to solve what the hydrogen industry calls its “chicken and egg” problem…
Until now, car companies were not building fuel cell cars because there was no place to re-fuel them, and energy companies weren’t building hydrogen stations, without the cars.
MITCHELL: So now what we see are those two camps are starting to talk together…
MULLEN: Bill Mitchell’s company is IN the second camp – he’s Vice President of sales and marketing for Nuvera Fuel Cells, which built the Billerica hydrogen station.
MITCHELL: The car companies are saying will you help build the hydrogen infrastructure and we’ll work together, we’ll tell you how many cars we’re going to build. You can’t take it out everywhere across the US but you’re going to start to see major metro areas get fuel cell vehicles and it’ll start to branch out across the US.
MULLEN: The cars are expensive – we’re talking Ferrari expensive – and so is the fuel – around 5 or 6 dollars a gallon right now, though that’s expected to come down to 2 or 3 dollars over time.
Then there are supply issues - non-renewable natural gas is still the cheapest source.
Hydrogen can also be extracted from water, through a pricier solar or wind-powered process.
But there's still no pipeline system to distribute it, or a standardized way to store it at the required high pressure.
So, the cars might be ready now… but how much longer will it take for the infrastructure-side to catch up?
LUFTGLASS: It’s anybody’s guess, really by most experts’ accounts we’re probably 5 to 10 years away from widespread use… might be longer
MULLEN: Bryan Luftglass works for Linde gas, one of the world’s largest hydrogen suppliers.
LUFTGLASS: Really depends on how much the government’s willing to support the development of the infrastructure, backing the cars and doing some of the R & D that needs to be done.
MULLEN: 5 years ago President Bush set a goal of making fuel-cell vehicles practical and cost-effective for large numbers of Americans by 2020.
The Department of Energy says the government has invested more than a billion dollars in fuel cell research so far.
But a new industry study found it’ll take another 55 billion, plus a 145 billion dollar investment from the private sector, to put a fleet of 2 million fuel cell cars on the road in the next decade.
AMBI: (key in, whining sound of car turning on, warming up)
MULLEN: For now, the Hydrogen Road Tour is working on raising awareness – good timing with some lawmakers along the way looking toward re-election this fall.
After the convoy pulled out of Billerica, things got pretty quiet at the Nuvera hydrogen station.
Besides the company itself, Marketing VP Bill Mitchell doesn’t know of many people in Massachusetts who’ll need it.
MITCHELL: But we have made the offer if there happens to be a fuel cell vehicle in the neighborhood we will certainly fill them up with hydrogen.
MULLEN: For NHPR News, I’m Shannon Mullen.
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The story says the only by product from burning hydrogen is C02, technically correct but it ignores the pollution created by the production of the hydrogen originally. I believe its normally created by passing electricity through water to disassociate the Oxygen and Hydrogen. This is energy intensive and the required energy came from a process that did produce pollution, ie a power plant. I'd be interested in a story the researched this and gave the complete picture. Overall it may not be a lot cleaner than internal combustion unless someone has a source of hydrogen that I don't know about.