CA government has money to burn, another technology they're pushing is hydrogen fuel.
Soon after Maribel Munoz joined the trailblazing ranks of American owners of hydrogen cars — a group that exists only in California — she began to fear that the low price of the taxpayer-subsidized Toyota Mirai she purchased came with a tremendous cost.
“You can’t have a job and own this car,” said the 49-year-old clothing designer from Azusa. “Finding fuel for it becomes your job. It is constant anxiety. I told the guy at Toyota, ‘If I have a stroke, it’s on you.’”
Munoz found herself stranded with an empty tank on the highway and stressed out by the repeated fuel shortages Mirai drivers call “hydropocalypses.” She struggled not to scream at her phone after driving miles to stations that a hydrogen fueling app said were working just fine, only to find them out of order.
These are the kind of hassles that can come with being an early adopter. But in the case of California’s “Hydrogen Highway” — a network of fueling stations former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dreamed would lure masses of Americans to hydrogen vehicles — even the most climate-conscious, tech-savvy motorists are asking: What’s the point? The Hydrogen Highway was meant to stretch from coast to coast. But after 17 years, it has yet to make it past the state line.
Environmentalists warn that the futuristic hydrogen fuel cell cars, marketed as producing zero emissions, leave an inexcusably heavy carbon footprint. The few automakers that have not backed away from the concept of powering a passenger car by splitting off electrons from hydrogen ions are struggling to persuade drivers that the vehicles are a reliable alternative to zero-emission battery-powered ones. And other states that typically look to California for climate-friendly transportation inspiration are taking a pass.
You can’t have a job and own this car. Finding fuel for it becomes your job.
Maribel Munoz, on her hydrogen-fueled car
“It started as kind of a bad bet by the state,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “Now it has become a legacy zombie technology.”
California can’t let go of Schwarzenegger’s vision. In 2004, he famously got behind the wheel of a clunky Hummer prototype that ran on hydrogen to signal that drivers can have it all: the excess and convenience of a gas guzzler, with none of the emissions. (It turned out that the hydrogen Hummer wasn’t so climate-friendly and never made it to commercial production.)
Monahan said the state’s aggressive push to get drivers into hydrogen cars is meant to help the technology rapidly scale up, to the point where large fleets of trucks running on diesel and aircraft powered by jet fuel could be retired in favor of cleaner-burning hydrogen models. Demonstration hydrogen trucks are operational at the Port of Los Angeles, and 48 hydrogen buses are being used by local transportation agencies.
Hydrogen boosters note that the far-more-popular battery-powered cars are experiencing their own growing pains, as automakers and regulators confront supply-chain challenges and environmental questions complicating the push to rid the planet of climate-unfriendly internal combustion engines. The hydrogen cars can go 400 miles on a full tank, and they don’t require waiting around for a battery to charge.
Yet nearly two decades into the hydrogen experiment, it remains a uniquely expensive gambit. The state has spent $125 million to make its struggling network of 50 public hydrogen fueling stations operational. That network is still so shaky — with stations frequently malfunctioning or out of fuel — that Toyota provides free towing and car rental service to drivers who purchase a Mirai, as getting stranded is a constant risk.
“It was a regular sight to see a car coming in on a flatbed when I went to get fuel,” said Scott Lerner, a writing instructor at UC Irvine who leased a Mirai until the hardship of hydrogen motoring got to be too much. “We would often have these commiserating circles at the station, where people would share horror stories.”
The state is undeterred. At the end of last year, as Lerner was retiring his Mirai, the California Energy Commission was greenlighting another $169 million for fueling stations. The panel hopes to help open 111 more stations by 2027, plus 13 that can also service trucks and buses.
That is a subsidy from the state of more than $1 million per station, mostly for a fleet of about 9,000 private vehicles. They are mainly Mirais, but there are also a smattering of Hyundai and Honda hydrogen cars on the freeways. In the latest unencouraging sign for Hydrogen Highway evangelists, Honda this month announced that it will soon stop selling the Clarity, the one hydrogen model it has available.
The news was met with relief by some.
“Failure is never something to celebrate, but nor is wasting money on dead end transport solutions,” Michael Liebreich, a clean-energy analyst, wrote on Twitter.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/ ... to-nowhere"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan
on last sentence.
