Car Emissions to End? Don’t Hold Your Breath

The dream of smog-free cities served by whispering fleets of zero-emission cars is still decades away from becoming reality.

Internal combustion engines have established such a stranglehold on the automotive industry that they will probably outlast everyone alive today.

Only limited numbers of non-polluting cars that run on hydrogen-powered fuel cells or that burn hydrogen rather than petrol or diesel are on the road, and even their most vociferous supporters say they will stay in the slow lane to the future.
“We have 900 million passenger cars and light trucks on the road and 51 million units of annual production capacity for those vehicles. It would thus take decades to replace all vehicles with combustion engines by those with fuel cells, even if the fuel cell production would be sufficient,” said Thomas Weber, head of research at DaimlerChrysler.

Weber believes the realistic approach will be to keep screwing down emissions from standard engines in steps so that they get as close to zero emissions as possible.

Real zero-emissions driving is possible only with fuel cells or electric cars. These vehicles have largely flopped and their batteries remain a problem.

Much more at Planet Ark