It’s Still Not a Fuel Celler’s Market

FRANKFURT, Germany – I am writing this column on a Toshiba laptop powered by a fuel cell produced by SFG Fuel Cell — a small Munich company specializing in direct methanol fuel cell technology.

I’ll tell you more about that later.

The laptop is at a media workstation set up by Opel to assist journalists covering the International Motor Show, the premier exhibit on the global automotive show calendar.
All of the laptops at the Opel workstation are powered by SFG fuel cells. That’s appropriate. The show is green, and fuel cells are the Great Green Hope.

Fuel cells are electrochemical conversion devices. They pull hydrogen from a variety of sources, such as methanol. The hydrogen mixes with oxygen to produce electricity that can power houses, cars . . . or laptops. The byproduct is water vapor.

Opel is a subsidiary of General Motors. Both companies have been working for nearly two decades to demonstrate the efficacy of using fuel cells to power cars, a development they believe could do much to remove the automobile from the environmental and energy security debates.

But it has been a rough go. Hydrogen fuel cell development is woefully expensive. The technology in fuel cell stacks, in which the electrochemical conversions take place, is complicated. Original fuel cells were big and clumsy. It has taken several billion dollars and lots and lots of time to reduce them to a size small enough, manageable enough to power a bank of 12 laptop computers at a car show.

It will take more time — estimates range from five to 15 years more — to affordably, effectively integrate fuel cells into the global mass market for cars and trucks.

That is a problem. We live in an impatient world. We want quick fixes to problems — such as the increasingly unfavorable balance between rising global demand for oil and dwindling exploitable oil reserves — that have developed over decades. Politicians, media, consumers — we all want a silver bullet, preferably one that can be fired without wounding any of us.

The Washington Post