I have a friend that works in the compressed gas business. His jaw dropped in disbelief when I told him that people might be reforming H2 in their garage and packing it into 10,000 psi tanks. He thought that the wear and tear on the pumps would pose a major safety problem. A chicken in every pot and a bomb in every garage.

If California eliminates zev credits for hydogen cars, we might see less of this nonsense, and more useful developments.

Honda is the worlds biggest (and in my opinion best) engine maker. It doesn't make sense to not focus on their core competency; which is building cheap and efficient engines. Furthermore, Honda doesn't have a relationship with a a battery maker like Toyota does with Panasonic (Toyota Group has a sizable ownership stake in Panasonic's battery division).

Fascinating how this is shaping up, with a couple smaller Japanese players, Mitsubishi and Subaru, talking EV's, while Honda and Toyota, with the big market share, stay back some distance. Perhaps the big company has more to lose and hews a conservative strategy whereas the small company must take risks to break out and grow.

Neil: Boy, I sure hope folks don't extract H2 at home! Biodiesel refining makes much more sense for a hobbyist. Maybe the prospect of voiding their homeowners insurance will form a sufficient deterrent.

Lulu: I still am not convinced it makes any sense to kill incentives for hydrogen. The vision of a car that only emits water is, from a local air quality perspective, better than diesel, gas, ethanol, etc. The arguments against it that I hear are that it's wasteful of energy due to poor conversion/storage efficiency, that it moves emissions to the generating plant and that there is no infrastructure developed to support it. But it seems to me, at least on two of those points, efficiency and infrastructure, investing in them may lead to improvements, whereas investing absolutely nothing will guarantee us we will make no progress. I think we should put the limited investment that's being made in perspective vis a vis cost of the Iraq war. I can't see how this could be construed as a huge, burdensome or painful cost to society.

I'd love to hear a rational explanation for why H2 makes sense from a transportation perspective. By my estimation, it's:

1) Electrolyze water - electricity: why not use it as a means of transport? water: does anyone NOT see this as a scare resource moving forward?

2) Fossil Fuel conversion - Aren't we trying to get off this to begin with?

Not withstanding the MASSIVE infrastructure issue, let's say you have H2, now you have to:

Pump it, compress it, store it, transport it, pump it, store it, pump it (to the car), store it, convert to electricity, power the vehicle.

How, in any way, shape, or form does that sound like an efficient use of resources?

Whether right or wrong, I don't think Honda's strategy and logic is that big a mystery:

- FCVs can achieve +300 mile range with zero emissions Tank to Wheels;
- PHEV, HEV in battery discharge mode < than 120 mile range;
- a Local mini-reformer in a service station connected to a natural gas pipeline can be configured to sequester the CO2, cutting FCV GHG emissions (Wells to Wheel) to nearly zero;
- Synthetic natural gas can be made from garbage, biomass, coal, biologically activated and abandoned oil fields, or shipped in by LNG and/or CNG;
- Honda believes that hydrogen storage (whether gas, solid, or liquid form factor) and home refueling utilizing natural gas will be economical within five years;

Honda got started making small aluminum air cooled engines after WWII. I remember the first Honda 600 I saw in the mid 70s with a 2 cylinder engine, it was a disaster.

Honda has always impressed me as a company that reinvents itself through innovation. They have done some impressive work and will continue to do so based on the profits that they reinvest in development.

Ill make it simpler to understand...

My friend took x bucks of ng and converted it into alot more then x bucks worth of electricity AND got free hot water and some h2 as well... all because electricity is valuable in japan and ng isnt nearly as much.

As he pointed out to me some islands have ekectric rates as high as 45 cents a kwh so there are alot of places where this is a godsend.

This is remarkable, it seems as if Fukui is completely oblivious of the recent advances in battery technology and the fundamental thermodynamic advantages of batteries over fuel cells.

More likely it is just another corporate smokescreen to deflect attention from a very active in-house programme to develop competitor-crushing battery EVs, (a similar strategy is currently employed by Toyota and VW for PHEVs).