Op-Ed: The future of the hydrogen car

Swindon - The BBC ‘Breakfast’ programme this morning featured a car made from gold that will set you back £3 million, and another that runs on hydrogen that cost £9 million.

If the above sound like novelties, the gold car is; it has just been made in India to celebrate “5000 glorious years of jewellery making”. The hydrogen car is a prototype, so the price is likely to come down considerably over the next few years. The vehicle was developed by Honda, and is one of only two such prototypes in Europe; it was at Swindon where it was refueled at Britain’s only commercial fueling station for hydrogen cars. The development of this marvellous beast is due in large part to the work of Professor Kevin Kendall of the University of Birmingham, who said it will be the car of the future, more so than the electric car, adding that it was at least as safe as the conventional petrol (gas) engine car. To date there are also such four filling stations in Birmingham where much of this research has been carried out, and there is a fair number of commercial hydrogen vehicles on the roads.