Hydrogen Car Ready To Roll by 2015

Toyota’s mass-market hydrogen car is expected for the 2015 model year.

 The  unnamed hydrogen-powered production model would cost between $50,000-$100,000 and have a range of 300 miles. Although Honda and Hyundai have beat Toyota to the market with hydrogen fuel cell-powered production vehicles, both were offered in a very limited scope. If Toyota wants to recreate the success it had with the Prius, it will have to offer the hydrogen fuel cell cars on a wider scale than its competitors.

Early hydrogen cars cost upwards of $1-million to build. with the  dozens of technological breakthroughs in the last few years, including several improvements to the design of hydrogen catalysts, the green technology is now much cheaper to produce.

Hydrogen-powered cars don’t “run on hydrogen” in the same way as a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine operates. The gas, which is one of the most plentiful in the universe, can be made from seawater and other sustainable sources, and is utilized in an in-car “fuel cell” that generates electricity for the car’s electric motor or motors. The waste product of a fuel cell is pure water (H2O). However, the main problem facing hydrogen-powered cars is a lack of infrastructure (i.e. hydrogen “gas stations”).

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