Could Europe steal a march on US and Japan with hybrid cars?

By Karen Carstens

Date: 06/05/04

ALL that is required to have fuel-cell cars hitting the road en masse are the right economic incentives as well as an appropriate infrastructure.

With the technology readily available, all governments must do now is lure automakers to their markets, industry experts claim.

"Although we're not ready to say we've solved all of the issues, we're pretty close. We're getting confident enough to say "it's doable"," said Byron McCormick, the Detroit-based executive director of General Motors' fuel cells activities group.

The US carmaker, which operates out of Mainz-Kastel in Germany, has decided to skip hybrids and focus on building 100% fuel-cell vehicles.

Concerns about Europe lagging behind the US and Japan are overblown, according to McCormick, and it's anyone's guess where fuel-cell cars will take off first.

It all depends on where they get the most support in the difficult initial phase before companies can turn a profit by getting thousands of cars to market, he explained.

Governments, he argued, should offer tax breaks as an incentive and adopt internationally agreed codes and standards as soon as possible, he suggested.

Fuel-cell cars will really take off in ten to 20 years, McCormick added, "so you've got to start to put the infrastructure in place now".

Europe could get an edge by hammering out details of how hydrogen will be taxed as a fuel in the EU and by examining how to create a full-coverage network of hydrogen fuel stations.

But although some automakers have placed their bets on fuel-cell cars, hybrids will probably "fill in the gap" for several years to come.

A study conducted last year for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(MIT) found that hybrid cars, which combine electric motors with small petrol engines, would outpace the benefits of hydrogen fuel-cell cars until at least 2020.

It concludes that hydrogen vehicles will not better diesel hybrids in terms of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The reason is that virtually all industrial hydrogen supply at present comes from natural gas.

This is because current methods of producing hydrogen through alternative sources, such as wind and solar power, are still too costly.

"If we learn how to do it, that's absolutely wonderful, but I won't hold my breath," said Adam Weiss, of MIT's laboratory for energy and environment.

Japanese firms Honda and Toyota are currently the leading makers of hybrid cars.

Yet, beyond 2020, MIT researchers predict hydrogen cars will win out.

The EU aims to replace 20% of conventional transport fuels with alternative fuels by that date, when it predicts up to 5% of vehicles will be hydrogen-powered.

But McCormick said that if the EU set itself a more ambitious target and created the right conditions, carmakers would be more likely to mass-market their fuel-cell vehicles here.

If not, they may hit the highways in Japan and the US first.