Getting hydrogen cars to live up to their hype

Engineers puzzle over how to mass-produce inexpensive electric batteries

The Ford Edge gliding along the George Washington Memorial Parkway doesn’t have spinning rims or a booming sound system. The bling in this SUV is the technology. The vehicle runs almost silently. It needs no gas and releases no polluting exhaust.

The HySeries Edge, which is to be unveiled at the Washington Auto Show today, is a plug-in hybrid with an electric drive powered by a battery and a hydrogen fuel cell. Its arrival intensifies the competition to manufacture a mass-market electric hybrid that reduces reliance on gasoline and curbs the emission of greenhouse gases.

But the futuristic Edge vehicle is Ford’s only one, and it cost $2 million to build. To get a car like this into the showroom for sale to the public will require the automotive and energy industries to leap high technological hurdles. The infrastructure to deliver alternative fuels such as hydrogen is in its infancy, and engineers are puzzling over how to mass-produce a lightweight, inexpensive and safe electric battery.

Because development costs are steep, the industry is hoping President Bush will announce his intention to increase research funding during his State of the Union speech tonight. Already the government pumps millions of dollars into the development of automotive technology. The carmakers frame their latest request as a battle cry against Japanese rivals, whose fuel-efficient models have cut sharply into the U.S. market. They have asked for as much as $500 million for battery research and development.

Washington Post