Vehicles, derived from the Latin word, VEHICULUM

When you test drive a hydrogen car you are expecting to get let down. You expect it to be horrible.

I think it is because we know electric cars are crap, so we don't know what to expect when we sit behind the wheel of a car fueled by hydrogen. We tend to forget hydrogen is explosive and is the active part of gasoline. Remember the Hindenburg explosion? That was hydrogen power.

But instead hydrogen cars these days are becoming rather... ordinary.

They are getting to be so ordinary, so much like any other vehicle in the way they drive, that you start thinking you ought to just go get one. After all, they issue no pollutants because there is no carbon, and they go about twice as far as gasoline vehicles do on the same amount of energy.
The vehicles themselves use no petroleum (commonly called gasoline in North America), though producing the hydrogen requires electricity using processes like steam reforming and electrolysis.

I won't bore you with the technical ways hydrogen is made, collected and store. The point is that it is being done, and cheaply too.

Automakers' grand design is that energy suppliers eventually will make hydrogen using renewable energy such as biomass, hydroelectricity, solar, wind and even tides.

At its current stage fuel-cell vehicles are pretty expensive. They're still being tested. Even four years from now, when the first HFC cars will be in auto dealerships they'll still probably be more expensive than the regular cars. Thankfully the price is going to be government-subsidized leases instead of selling them outright.

As mass production comes into play the prices will drop dramatically.

Right now there are almost no fuel-cell vehicles are available, but it doesn't matter because there are almost no hydrogen filling stations anyway.

But that is about to change in 2008, which is to be a watershed year.

Honda has designed a new hydrogen fuel-cell car. It is a sleek, four-door, compact, front-drive sedan that it plans to lease to as many as 100 consumers in the USA next year.

General Motors, not to be out done, is distributing about 100 Chevrolet Equinox SUVs converted to fuel-cell operation to individuals for three months at a time over the next three years. They'll be parceled out around Los Angles, New York City and Washington, D.C., places where there are hydrogen fueling stations. It's called Project Driveway.

The Equinoxes will go to people considered influential, celebrities and politicians mostly.

But let's talk about the car itself.

# Performance: Fast off the line, satisfactory at higher speed. Hydrogen-Electric motors have a delightful trait. They deliver all of the torque INSTANTLY. No revving required, the way you'd have to do in a gasoline engine only better. The car ends up feeling a bit like a racer. The transmission has but a single speed. No shifting. Just a continuing ramp of constant power.

# Noise: Not much, and that's a big deal. You won't be able to show off how loud your engine is to your date. The early hydrogen prototypes had a whine sound but that has been fixed by installing a big, gutsy supercharger. That has practically eliminated the howl.

# Appearance: Similar to the conventional, gasoline-fueled, 2007 Equinox with a couple of notable exceptions.

Instead of round tailpipes out back, the fuel-cell version has four rectangular slots in what car folks call the rear fascia. That's the part that looks like it's the bumper but really is just a plastic covering.

GM says they wanted to distinguish it from the gasoline vehicles.

Inside, trim and touches unique to the fuel-cell vehicles give it a premium look and feel compared with the gasoline Equinox, which is a bit disappointing inside in spite of the upgraded materials and controls.

# Function and Safety: About the same as a gasoline model. The rear cargo area is compromised a bit because the third of three hydrogen tanks sits higher than the two in front of it, putting a horizontal bulge behind the rear seats, about where you might want space for beach chairs or big bags.

And in what might be contrary to popular belief, hydrogen almost certainly is a safer fuel than gasoline. If you spill gasoline at the filling station, for instance, it pools and the volatile vapors concentrate. If you spill hydrogen, it evaporates into the atmosphere at 40 mph because it's lighter than air.
Overall the Equinox was a fun ride. Handled like a regular car and I thought that maybe they were pulling a fast one on me. I had to check and make certain it wasn't a regular gasoline engine under the hood.

And that's a good thing.