I have been following fuel cells off and on for the past couple years. About 6 months ago I read that GM (I think it was them) should have a production car on the market 2005/2006. There are cities that are running fuel cell busses now. Also if you check out some of the major companies that are involved, like a partnership between GE and Ballard (again the names are rusty), you will find that they are setting up their distributors now. There are all ready houses in the NorthEast being powered by these fuel cells using natural gas and propane. They are so effiecent because they supply the house with electricity, heat and hot water. The same ones are basically maintenance free with the larger ones require fan maintenance as they use a fan to move enough air across the cells. They even have units that are big enough and are presently installed, that are supply electricity for house developments and large factories.
I also read a report where there was a company playing around with a system, where they used a solar panel to create enough energy to separate water into H2 and O. They then used the H2 to power the cells. Of course the question is why not just use the solar power of the electricity, but it shows they are working on ideas and coming up with solutions.
Recently they opened a H2 gas station in Iceland. This was the ideal place to open it, because it was readily available to the public. That will be our problem here. Not the cars, but the stations to service those cars with H2.
There are many people thinking out of the box, for example. one guy took his engine out of his car. installed a jet engine starter that drove his transmission. He also had a lawn mower engine that drove a generator that in turn powered the starter. His results were 60 MPH and 75 MPG. Is it possible that we will see some kind of marriage like this? Pull into a station and get both gas and water. A small generator that does not need much it order to produce the H2 from water.
You can buy a fuel cell that runs on butane that will power a laptop and exhaust 2 drops of water every 3 days. The technology is here. We will have problems with the support side when we talk about cars. The "gas stations".
Jerry