Volkswagen Will Stick With Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Development

After the Obama administration cut funding for hydrogen fuel-cell research from the Department of Energy’s budget, the fuel-cell vehicle had a major setback.

This hasn’t deterred Volkswagen from pursuing hydrogen cars, though, and it showed off its fuel-cell Ling Yu Passat in California to prove it. VW makes clear that it knows full well Americans won’t be filling up with hydrogen any time soon, but says it sees fuel cells as a solution in the making, even if they’re far from production-ready.

Its “Future Mobility Roadmap” first outlines a switch to hybrids and electric vehicles, long before hydrogen-powered cars. Like Honda, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, VW doesn’t want to only pursue the electric route, but as most of the scientific community has stressed, fuel cells just don’t make sense right now.

Building the infrastructure to support a fleet of hydrogen vehicles has proved a prohibitive expense (not to mention issues of fuel transport and the cost to manufacture the vehicles). Still, Volkswagen will continue to develop the technology and look for ways around all the daunting challenges.

VW Still Devoted to Hydrogen (Autopia)

Comments

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are electric vehicles. Electrons are stripped from the hydrogen to power the motor via the fuel cell.
Batteries store the electrons and do the same task,
It will be the advancement in both technologies that will decide what will power our elecric vehicles in the future.

Mike H. founder HYDROGENHEADS

VW needs to focus on its quality and reliability issues and leave the future tech to GM and the Japanese. While they do their science experiments Kia is outselling the VW brand after only 15 years in the US.

Hybrit,

Sometimes i just sit and laugh at your stupid comments. they have no relevance to the article whatsoever.

Kia may be out-selling VW in the US, but take two things into cosnideration: Kia's are cheap in every sense of the word and VW's are not, and VW recently passed up Ford for the third spot in terms of global sales. It is behind only Toyota and GM, and GM will be falling off pretty soon with this bankruptcy and the fact that it is selling off Opel/Vaxhaull, its European brands.

JM,
Read the article, moron. VW is fiddling with hydrogen cars that won't be on the road in your lifetime while Kia eats its lunch. VW is not in the same class with Toyota or GM. Americans are smart enough to avoid VW, but I guess that doesn't apply to you.