Fill’er Up - With Hydrogren - March 1st, 2007
There’s a new fuel station at the University of California, Irvine, today, but instead of merely choosing between different grades of unleaded gasoline, or even having a diesel option, this one also offers hydrogen.
While hydrogen isn’t an option for most of us, the select few drivers around the world who had first crack at BMW’s Hydrogen-7 gas/hydrogen hybrid car do need to fill up, and while the station in California is currently the first - and only - such fuel station in the United States. But it may not be the last. According to the Greenville News, Tom Purves, chairman and chief executive officer of BMW of North America and chairman of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers stated, “We at BMW believe that hydrogen will replace petroleum in the long term.”
BMW revealed the Hydrogen-7 last fall, in response to increasingly strict emissions requirements that are going into effect throughout the European Union countries between now and 2020, choosing hydrogen as their fuel of choice because it is non-toxic, can be regenerated, is available universally, and its only post-combustion byproduct is water. Further, they chose a liquified version of hydrogen, rather than fuel cells, because they wanted to retain use of existing internal-combustion engines.
While the Hydrogen-7 is still available only to extremely select (read: hand-picked) clientele, the fact that BMW is involved in green technology at all is a bold statement on sustainable mobility to fellow manufacturers, especially since the European company has largely eschewed the word “hybrid” even when incorporating standard hybrid-car features into its newer models.
The UC-Irvine fuel station is a joint project between BMW and Air Products, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District.
Posted on March 1st, 2007 by QueenMab
Filed under: news |
Leave a Reply