There is a great deal of talk these days about electric cars and gasoline cars, including questions about range and ease of refueling. There are skeptics as always about how the real world will be able to handle recharging challenges as the push for electric vehicles increases daily.
But there is a very small blip on the horizon that could change the entire landscape for vehicles. Up to now, most everyone has been talking about electric vehicles built around batteries that need to be plugged in.
Right now there are several tests in the United States and Japan that have a different point of view on electric vehicles.
There is some slight interest with a lot of people on the whole arena of fuel cells.
We just acquired a vehicle for our use over the next 12 months that is electric but exclusively uses fuel cells to generate the electricity. It will have a long range and very quick refueling to make it a competitive power source against internal combustion engines or batteries.
I am sure that everyone can remember the fateful time in the space race when an Apollo spacecraft was well on its way to landing on the moon and an oxygen tank exploded, leading to fuel-cell damage on board. The crew was lucky to safely return to Earth.
That time has long passed, and we are looking forward to being able to evaluate this vehicle's fuel cell.
There are many engineers who strongly believe that the future for electric vehicles will not be batteries but will be fuel cells.
It would seem that fuel cells are late in the game and have a big job trying to catch up with batteries as the favored power source.
But after seeing the potential for this source of power, many people have become very enamored with this alternative.
I cannot help but think that competition is a good thing and as time marches on, it will be enlightening to see how all these power sources survive in the coming months and years. It is way too soon to pick winners and losers. But you may want to hedge your bets. You never know what some bright innovator has planned.
