Calif. Gov. Schwarzenegger Vows to Back 'Hydrogen Highway' After Leaving Office

Calif. Gov. Schwarzenegger Vows to Back 'Hydrogen Highway' After Leaving Office

By John O'Dell May 5, 2010

Comment Draws Applause, But Underscores His Failure to Meet Hydrogen Fueling Goal

Schwarzenegger's entire 13.5 minute speech at the National hydrogen Association Conference is captured on this video posted on the California governor's official Website.

By Danny King, Contributor

LONG BEACH, Ca. - Was it a statement of solidarity, or admission of defeat?

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed in a speech Wednesday at the National Hydrogen Association Conference and Expo that his seven-year effort to create a so-called "Hydrogen Highway" of fuel-cell powered vehicles will continue long after he leaves office next year.

"This is something that I love to do, to fight for the environment and to fight against global warming," Schwarzenegger said to an applauding audience of about 500 people. "You will have me as a partner forever."

The governor in 2004 signed a so-called California Hydrogen Blueprint Plan that set a goal of as many as 100 statewide hydrogen fueling stations by the end of this year, with a longer-term phase goal of as many as 250 stations.

So far, only 31 have either been built or are under construction, Schwarzenegger said. Hitting that goal of 100 will take longer than he's got left under California's two-terms-and-you're-out rule for governors.

While Schwarzenegger's declaration drew the largest applause from among a list of Expo speakers that included executives from automakers Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors, he and other speakers also alluded to hydrogen's chicken-or-egg situation in which billions of dollars of infrastructure investment must either trigger or be triggered by a substantial increase in demand for hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Proponents of hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles tout the fact that the cars' only tailpipe emission is water vapor, and at least eight automakers - including GM and Toyota - are planning to sell fuel-cell cars by 2015. The vehicles use compressed hydrogen gas mixed with oxygen in a suitcase-sized fuel cell to create power that runs the vehicles' electric motors.

Cheaper Than Gasoline?

In one big boost for fuel cell advocates, Toyota managing officer Yoshiko Masuda said Wednesday that his company now pegs the cost of refueling with hydrogen - exclusive of the cost of building hydrogen stations -  at 10 percent less than the cost of refueling with gasoline and believes it may drop to half the cost of gasoline by the end of the decade.

"The fuel cell can do very great things," said GM executive director Charles Freese, whose company has built the world's largest fleet of fuel-cell vehicles. "The technologies for a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle are now commercial-ready."

Freese, who said GM's fleet of 119 fuel-cell vehicles have amassed 1.2 million miles of testing, added that the vehicles have the potential for mass adoption because they can replicate a typical gas-powered vehicle's cruising range of 300 miles and fill-up time of three minutes.

His statement may have been a pitch for more public investment in hydrogen fuel development as as well as an effort to lobby for favorable treatment of fuel cell vehicles by the California Air Resources Board and its zero-emission vehicle program.

Many Roadblocks

Hydrogen faces more challenges that the absence of a public fueling infrastructure.

Battery-electric vehicles - which compete with hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles for government funding and public attention - can't yet match fuel-cell vehicles' cruising range or refueling-time standards, but hydrogen backers know that right now people are a lot more likely to be willing to recharge a battery electric car form a charger in their garage than to want to store hydrogen at home.

Additionally, vehicle costs need to drop substantially.

Toyota, whose Highlander fuel-cell vehicles have reached the 500-mile cruising-range level, is developing fuel-cell cars that will cost about a quarter of what they do now - some automakers have pegged that figure at about $1 million per car because of such low volumes.

But per-vehicle costs would have to fall a whopping 95% from current costs to be commercially viable, according to Masuda.

Government-backed funding for infrastructure and vehicle subsidies won't do the trick alone, said Markus Bachmeier, head of hydrogen solutions at the Linde Group industrial gases firm. But where additional investment will come from is anyone's guess.

Private Investment Needed

Bachmeier cited so-called "unconventional investors" such as billionaires Warren Buffett, who is backing Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD, and Bill Gates, as key to the expansion of the hydrogen highway.

Such investors, who are more likely to factor in the societal effect of more hydrogen-powered vehicles and look beyond the return on investment, are needed because "nobody can expect public authorities to subsidize that buildup," said Bachmeier.

Lack of infrastructure investment has led some automakers to either halt or slow down hydrogen-related fuel programs. For instance, BMW said late last year that it would stop on-road testing of its 100 hydrogen-burning internal combustion engine 7-series sedans after two years and more than 2 million miles of real-world driving because of lack of fueling infrastructure.

Additionally, Honda, whose FCX Clarity is the only ready-for-production hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle, said in mid-2008 that it planned to lease about 200 of the vehicles by 2011 but has leased less than two dozen since then because of a combination of a slowing economy and a lack of fueling stations.

Terminator's In Neutral

All of which makes Schwarzenegger's "I'll be back" promise to the hydrogen group more of a "better-late-than-never" proclamation.

And while he still likes hydrogen as an important future energy carrier for transportation, the governor stopped far short of endorsing it as his favored gasoline replacement.

"We don't care if it's biofuel, vegetable oil, natural gas or hydrogen cars," he said. "As long as we stop relying on fossil fuel [we] get...from countries that hate us, that despise us."

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.