Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may very well be the future, and administrators in the UK are expecting to have the first on the road by 2015.
By 2030, they expect to have maybe 1.5 million on the road, which is pretty ambitious, to say the least.
Of course, the fuel cell technology costs a bit more than conventional vehicles, and at the moment, there isn’t enough infrastructure to refuel them.
One idea is to offer grants up to $7,888 to offset the price of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which should make them more competitive. Infrastructure plans include increasing the number of refueling stations in the UK to 65 by 2015, when the first vehicles hit the road. Administrators expect to have 330 refueling stations by 2025, and a total of 1,150 by 2030.
These sound like great plans, but who’s going to pay for them? Researchers in the UK estimate that this plan will cost over $625 million in government dollars, but no one’s talked about where it will come from. At the moment, Parliament has enough funding for the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle grants, but who knows if this funding will pass over to the next Parliament?
