California's on-again, off-again hydrogen highway seems to be on again, thanks to $7.7 million ponied up by the Air Resources Board last week. It's chump change. And it reflects the state's ambiguous, cash-strapped and corrupt approach to lowering emissions.
If taxpayers are going to subsidize an infrastructure for alternative fuels, why hydrogen? Automakers are pushing it, that's why. And to be sure, hydrogen cars are already here, steaming around American roads.
But electric cars are the more certain future. Project Better Place, an entirely private venture, is building an electric-car infrastructure in Israel. In doing so, it's having to work with automakers to establish various industry standards. It's actually having a say in what electric cars will be.
Photo: Jurvetson, licensed through Creative Commons
And that's not the only alternative. Read after the jump.
Guy Negre's air-powered cars, first considered an eccentric novelty, are now whooshing around the French Riviera. India's Tata Motors paid $28 million last year for the right to build and sell Tata-branded Aircars in India. Zero-Pollution Motors has licensed the technology to build Aircars in the U.S.
The Aircar can reach 70 mph and has a range of 125 miles . . . on flat roads. The greatest drawback to the technology is that air doesn't store much energy. So recharging stations would need to be as abundant as gasoline stations are today. They would be far less toxic, however, and would be far easier to build and maintain--especially if taxpayers weren't underwriting them.
Photo: Air Power Motors
