Fading future of California’s hydrogen highway

March 11, 2009 at 2:43 pm

  (Source: New York Times, Greenwire via Autobloggreen) 

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger loves things that start with H, like Hummers and California’s Hydrogen Highway. Well, he used to anyway. We know about the Governator’s move away from gas-guzzling Hummers and towards greener transportation options. A recent article in the New York Times (and in WIRED a year ago) show that Arnold’s dream of a statewide network of 150-200 H2fueling stations is slowly fading as well. 
Soon after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) took office in 2003, he set in motion a campaign promise to build, by 2010, a “hydrogen highway” composed of 150 to 200 fueling stations spaced every 20 miles along California’s major highways.

Schwarzenegger’s “Vision 2010” plan promised that every California motorist would have access to hydrogen fuel by the end of the decade. He has since repeatedly mentioned the highway in a standard stump speech on his environmental accomplishments.

But the program has fallen short of expectations. With less than 10 months until the end of the decade, 24 hydrogen fueling stations are operating in California, most of them near Los Angeles.

The vision of a hydrogen infrastructure, with fueling stations dotting the interstates, has not materialized, partly because the eager governor may have set unrealistic targets.

Gerhard Achtelik, manager of the hydrogen highway program at the Air Resources Board, admitted in an interview that the state would not hit its 150-station goal by 2010.

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