Chevrolet Silverado, with H2 fuel-cell powertrain, at Road Rally IV. Under test by the US Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) until July 2006.

Automakers participating with fuel cell vehicle prototypes included Ford, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, and Toyota.

The workshop primarily addressed the planned expansion of California’s hydrogen refueling infrastructure—also known as the California Hydrogen Highway project—which is intended to provide public access to hydrogen fuel along every major highway in California by 2010. (Earlier post.)

Sixteen hydrogen-refueling stations are currently in operation in California, with next-phase plans for fifteen more, and a total of 250 stations statewide by 2015. There are 95 hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are currently on California’s roads.

Hydrogen fueling stations in California

The workshop wrapped up with a session on hydrogen fuel cell vehicle safety, attended by local firefighters.

From a technical point of view, the most striking aspect of many vehicles on display was the production-level construction of the powertrains. Engineers from Honda and Toyota confirmed that a large part of their efforts are now concentrated on developing prototypes that could easily migrate to conventional assembly lines, as opposed to “one-off” examples. Another strong trend is away from out-sourced hydrogen technology components—such as fuel cell stacks and hydrogen tanks—in favor of components that have been designed and produced by the vehicle manufacturer.

One roadblock to commercial hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle sales is the lack of a standard for hydrogen fuel purity, which directly affects fuel-cell stack life. A spokesman for DaimlerChrysler stated that many fuel cell engineers are hoping for, in his words, a standard of “six nines”, or 99.9999% fuel purity—much cleaner than almost all commercially available hydrogen today. The U.S. Department of Energy hopes to settle on a hydrogen standard for fuel cell vehicles by 2015.

Japan’s MITI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) facilitates the Japan Hydrogen Fuel Cell Demonstration Project (JHFC) which is a government-sponsored collaborative similar to the California Fuel Cell Partnership. According to the JHFC, twelve hydrogen-refueling stations are now up and running in Japan.