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California's Hydrogen Highway Adds Another Station
plover writes Scientific American notes that a new hydrogen refueling station has been added in Sacramento, bringing the state's total to ten. This was timed to coincide with Toyota's Japan release of their first commercially available fuel cell vehicle, the Mirai. Toyota is scheduled to start selling cars in Northern California next year.
Most hydrogen comes from natural gas (with lousy conversion efficiency. If you get your hydrogen from electricity, it has even worse efficiency. It uses about four times the electricity to make hydrogen and then convert it back to electricity in your "fool cell" vehicle as just putting the electricity in your vehicle and bypassing the whole hydrogen part.
Plus, electricity is everywhere, literally everywhere. Anyone can just plug in at home and work, etc. With hydrogen, you have only ten places to refuel in California... not going very far.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There was actually very good infrastructure in place for liquid fuel engines since kerosene (for lanterns and such) was widely available and sold in metered amounts from pumps in the late 1800s. It was not nearly the stretch to extend that network for gasoline dispensing as it would be to build a completely new infrastructure for hydrogen fuel.
Hydrogen, from generation to storage to use, is a bad, inconvenient, and very expensive idea.
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Hydrogen stations in California have had a choppy rollout. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) first created the "hydrogen highway" concept in 2004 by executive order and budgeted $15 million for hydrogen demonstration projects, stations and buses through 2008. Schwarzenegger increased spending in 2007, signing A.B. 118, which provided roughly $90 million for hydrogen through this year. A bill that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed last year, A.B. 8, reformed the funding process, allocating $20 million per year through 2023 or until 100 stations are built.
So CA has spent $100 million so far, and all we have are 10 stations? Where did all the money go?