Hydrogen Refueling Station Opens in D.C.

Yahoo! News - Hydrogen Refueling Station Opens in D.C.Here is the interesting stuff:

"GM hopes to sell affordable hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2010, and Shell envisions building on the number of stations and having mass-market penetration between 2015 and 2025."

I don't know if somebody said this at the event or the reporter is parroting something out of a previous publicity material. If GM is ready to sell an AFFORDABLE H2 powered vehicle by 2010, then I will salute them. I have been, however, spending some serious time reading and thinking about the H2 based vehicles, and I am not ready to believe that claim. May be 100,000 dollars is affordable to a few people, but not to 99.999% of the population. Even if the vehicle costs were somehow magically down to 30,000 or less, I have serious doubts about reliability, performance, range amog other things. I believe that such publicity events like this one are premature, and are creating a false sense of hope in the minds of the public. Given the state of the technology, scare resources should be spent on serious R&D and not on demonstration events.

UPDATE: The Yahoo Story is likely to expire after some days. Matt Wald reports in NYT on the same.