Our New Hydrogen Bomb

February 21, 2003
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
www.nytimes.com

MESA, Ariz.

To understand how we might bolster our national security
aside from invading Iraq, I'm on a General Motors test
track here in Arizona, driving the coolest car you've never
seen.

It's called Hy-wire, and it's a one-of-a-kind prototype: a
four-door sedan fueled by hydrogen, capable of speeds of
100 miles an hour, whisper-quiet, and emitting no pollution
at all - only water vapor as exhaust. It looks like a
spaceship, with glass all around and no pedals or steering
wheel.

Jeff Wolak, the engineer who travels with Hy-wire and
mothers it, explained that it is drive-by-wire, controlled
by electronics and computers rather than cables and
hydraulics. To accelerate, you rotate the handgrips. To
steer, you move the grips up or down.

Then Mr. Wolak tells me to drive the $5 million prototype.
He is in the passenger seat and picks up what looks like a
computer game console that he rests on his lap.

"It's a second set of controls with an emergency brake," he
explains brightly. "We only have one of these vehicles, and
we don't want to risk it getting in a crash."

And he hadn't even seen me drive.

On the vast track, the
Hy-wire zipped about flawlessly. It turns sharply, brakes
smoothly and accelerates easily - all almost noiselessly.
It's all you would expect of a $5 million car. And if a
driver crosses to England, he could press a button and the
driving controls would whirr over to the right front seat.

Likewise, each driver of a family car could have a
different steering mechanism. "It could be a joystick for
the 20-something generation who are used to computer games,
or a steering wheel for the older set used to a Cadillac,"
said Timothy Perzanowski, a G.M. engineer.

In short, hydrogen fuel cells are not necessarily a distant
dream. Toyota, Honda and BMW also are churning out hydrogen
prototypes. General Motors is talking about having the
Hy-wire in showrooms by 2010 and selling a million hydrogen
vehicles by 2015.

"We see fuel cells as the first technology that has come
along in 100 years that has the potential of competing with
the internal combustion engine," said Scott Fosgard, a G.M.
official involved in hydrogen cars. "We're doing this
because we're going to make a boatload of money."

Mr. Fosgard says that eventually, hydrogen cars will have
significant advantages: "What does it cost in New York for
a parking space? Maybe $500 a month? Well, imagine if the
parking garage paid you, because while it's parked there
it's producing electricity that is sold back to the grid."

This may be pie in the sky, of course. For example, it's
true that hydrogen vehicles can generate electricity while
parked, but the cost of producing it might be prohibitive.

History is littered with other energy technologies that
fell flat: synthetic fuels, biomass, nuclear fusion, solar,
electric vehicles. Hydrogen cars still face technical
hitches, as well as the central challenge: how to cut
costs. Carlos Ghosn, the head of Nissan, has joked that
fuel cell cars would carry a sticker price of about
$700,000.

Moreover, getting the hydrogen can be a problem and can
produce greenhouse gases. Hydrogen does not exist on its
own but is locked up in water and fossil fuels. The goal is
to use wind energy to pluck hydrogen from water in the
ocean, but in the near term it's more likely that the
hydrogen will come from natural gas.

The bottom line is that President Bush was dead right last
month to offer $1.7 billion to boost hydrogen technology,
although it would help if the White House also promoted
high-mileage hybrid cars for the present. The government
could also do more, by deregulating commercial power supply
by fuel cells and by encouraging fleet purchases of
hydrogen vehicles.

What does any of this have to do with Iraq?

Hydrogen cars
are a reminder that there is more than one way to ensure
our supplies of energy in the years ahead, even if invading
Iraq and investing in hydrogen address the issue on very
different time horizons. Nonetheless, I have to say that
waging war seems a reflex, pushing toward a hydrogen
economy a vision.

As Mr. Fosgard of G.M. put it only half-jokingly: "I don't
want to say that this car will eliminate war, but we might
not have wars for energy anymore. We'd have to find
different reasons to go to war."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/21/opinion/21KRIS.html?ex=1046858542&ei=1&en=39ec8fcb13340349