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Boris Johnson’s Hydrogen Highway
August 24th, 2009 by Barry PotierBoris Johnson is to help create Britain’s first “hydrogen highway”, using a scheme to promote zero-emission cars modelled on one introduced in California by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s governor.
The mayor of London wants to make Britain a leader in fuel cell technology and is planning a network of hydrogen filling stations in the capital. He intends to assemble a pilot fleet of about 150 hydrogen cars in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics, together with five buses and 20 black taxis.
Johnson’s officials believe that by 2029 as many as one in three of the 31m cars in Britain could be fuelled by hydrogen. Britain has agreed to cut its CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050.
Boris Johnson said the hydrogen network would be developed alongside government plans to introduce electric cars.
“Harnessing low-carbon technology is key to solving the pressing issues of energy security, cutting climate change emissions and improving air quality,” said Johnson. “With electric vehicles gearing up to become a mainstream choice in a few years’ time, we are creating the right conditions for them to flourish.”
In April, Gordon Brown announced plans to subsidise electric-car use. Johnson followed up by unveiling a scheme for 25,000 “juice points” — charging stops for electric cars across London.
“We think it’s going to be pretty big,” said Kit Malthouse, deputy London mayor and chairman of the London Hydrogen Board, the group overseeing the project, who added: “We plan an initial network of six or so hydrogen fuelling stations around the capital. We would then be able to fuel the next generation of vehicles.”
A new lightweight hydrogen-powered car, capable of speeds up to 50mph, was shown off in London in June. Able to travel 240 miles without refuelling, and weighing just 772lb (350kg), the two-seater Riversimple Urban Car could be put into production as soon as 2013. Supported by the great-grandson of car pioneer Ferdinand Porsche, the Riversimple car does the petrol equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon.
Riversimple Urban Car
Can Boris succeed where Schwarzenegger has failed? Arnold’s “hydrogen highway“, has not moved forward at the speed he predicted. With oil prices low again, the impetus behind hydrogen-powered cars has dissipated. California has only 250 of the vehicles, while he had envisaged 2,000 by 2010, and there are just 26 fuelling stations.
Do you think Boris Johnson’s scheme is doomed to failure or can Britain become a leader in fuel cell technology?
Tags: Boris Johnson, electric car, hydrogen highway, hydrogen network, Hydrogen powered car
August 24th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Thanks for writing about hydrogen fuel cell cars. While I am glad the mayor of London wants to build more hydrogen fueling stations, I think oil prices going a lot higher in the coming years will mean the transition to hydrogen will need to happen A LOT sooner than people realize.
I would highly recommend checking out the following article to see how far along the Toyota hydrogen fuel cell technology is.
7 reasons to love Toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (which will be at dealerships in 2015 and “affordable”)
http://tiny.cc/UVW6m
Greg Blencoe
Chief Executive Officer
Hydrogen Discoveries, Inc.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Having researched this over the past 6 months, I’m convinced that we face a massive problem with renewable energy sources being intermittent: either unpredictable, unreliable or inconvenient. We need a way to store surplus energy, when we can get it, to be able to use it later when we need it. The only way we can foresee at the moment, to do this on a large enough scale, is to create hydrogen from water by electrolysis. As it happens, this falls very neatly into the lap of hydrogen-fuelled cars, which then become much more viable as a spin-off. I think Boris is heading in the right direction, but for the wrong reasons. There are lots of massive technical problems ahead, but I believe hydrogen is our inevitable future.
April 14th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Hydrogen is the worst alternative fuel available. Fuel cell cars are three to four times less efficient than electric cars and extracting hydrogen from water produces more CO2 than any other source unless it’s extracted using renewable energy which is ten times less efficient.
In 1996 GM produced the EV1, an electric car that had a range of about 100 mile, perfect for commuting. Today there is the Tesla. Incredibly efficient 236 mile range charges at 56 miles range per hour charge (Incidentally it goes 0-60 in 3.7 seconds, thats faster than a 911 GT3RS) . The direct grid to car electricity means you don’t have to waste all that energy and co2 extracting the hydrogen. Oh and maintenance of electric cars is easy because of the simplicity of the design and longevity of the parts.
Hydrogen is not a viable way, in the near to mid term, of reducing co2 emissions, if anything it could make them worse. Hydrogen is being pushed by the oil industry because if we go electric then they are out of the loop. They, along with, GM sabotaged the EV1. Don’t let them fool you. Hydrogen is not the correct way to address co2 emissions.