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.“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. )State officials say the hydrogen experiment is merely experiencing the growing pains of every transportation innovation California pushed into the mainstream. The Biden administration is right there alongside California, championing lucrative subsidies and demonstration projects aimed at making hydrogen fuel an affordable and truly green alternative, one that it hopes could complement the battery-powered electric vehicle market.
All data is taken from the source: http://latimes.com
Article Link: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-08-10/hydrogen-highway-or-highway-to-nowhere
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