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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (303452)	9/17/2006 9:33:25 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578027

"I'm not sold on hydrogen as a short term solution... aren't we a way off from affordable applications?" Fuel cells are expensive because they are a low volume product. The only real problem is lack of range, for a car you can only go 100-150 miles before you have to refuel. But that isn't a limiting factor for things like city busses and city vehicles which would be the initial target for anything like that. Hopefully we can solve the problems with regenerating sodium borohydride or devise some other solution as volume starts to ramp up. And fuel cell vehicles are a natural for plugin hybrids. The point is that we can fix this problem starting a few years ago. We have the technology, it is just a matter of getting government to start the ball rolling with investments, tax credits and direction. Waiting for the market place to do it means more of the same old, same old. The costs and risks are high, which means that no company is going to touch it. Mandating that the auto companies need to have 20% of their fleet as plugin hybrids would be a start. Add in some tax incentives and another gas guzzler tax. Also start a program where cities convert their fleets over to hydrogen and subsidize hydrogen reformers to fuel them. Pour some real money into researching hydrogen storage. Fund prototype Porta-Nukes.