Three hydrogen buses began service in a two year trial this week running from Central London to East London. Each bus costs approximately $1.35 million dollars each. This may sound a lot of money but as the hydrogen fuel cell A-Class Mercedes being trialled by Daimler-Chrysler cost one million dollars each the buses seem like a relative bargain.
Indeed as buses follow fixed routes and start and end at depots they are much better suited to using hydrogen than passenger cars at the moment. The buses will have a range of a 125 miles before refuelling.
Let's hope to see an infrastructure built for fuelling buses with hydrogen throughout the world in the next few years as an infrastructure for cars seems decades away. Also train networks should be fully electrified (many like those in England still run mainly on non-renewable diesel).
Finally it needs saying that hydrogen is NOT an energy source but an energy carrier (like electricity). In order for it to be truly clean the hydrogen needs to be generated from a renewable source like wind power or solar. Therefore we need to make a major investment in wind & solar power NOW so that when the technology is ready for hydrogen cars we will have a clean energy source to make the hydrogen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3391507.stm
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