Interesting review of the Honda FCX hydrogen car. The author ends with the line "Just bring me one that I can plug in". Exactly right. For some reason Honda's CEO is against electric cars. Not sure if this is just fundamentally wrong thinking or some sort of view that the car companies cannot lose indirect control over the automobile power plant -- electric motors don't have many patents and associated Intellectual Property that corporations have a lock on. Electric cars have simple engines, no transmission, no coolant or emissions systems. Their simplicity also means a shocking lack of wear parts -- just about the only thing left is the brakes. Ultimately, this is what killed the GM EV1 and other electric cars IMO.

Face it: Fuel-cell technology has been eclipsed by vastly cheaper, here-now advances in batteries and plug-in electric vehicles. To knit together even the barest network of H2 refueling stations would cost billions. And, in any case, the fuel itself, whether produced by cracking natural gas or hydrolyzing water (consult your freshman chemistry texts), represents a horrible energy return on investment.

Some illustrative math: It takes about 60 kilowatt-hours of electricity to gin a kilogram of hydrogen from water. The FCX Clarity's tank holds about 4 kilograms of H2 and that gives it a range of about 270 miles on 240 kWhs. The all-electric Tesla Roadster has a 53-kWh lithium-ion battery and a range of 220 miles. So the Tesla's per-mile costs in electricity are roughly one-quarter what they are in the FCX Clarity.