Global automakers will start to build and offer very acceptable hydrogen-fueled vehicles, in numbers from dozens to thousands a year, between now and 2020. [...]
Meanwhile, U.S. plug-in car sales are likely to come in around 90,000 this year—of which more than 15,000 will be Tesla Model S electric luxury sedans with more than 200 miles of range.
We expect there to be multiple fuels in the decades going forward; the hegemony of gasoline and diesel will slowly erode as more ethanol, more natural gas, and probably a lot more electricity makes its way from the grid into more vehicles.
Will hydrogen have a place in the mix?
Perhaps not surprisingly, electric-car advocate Chelsea Sexton, to whom we often turn for perspective, thinks not.
But in responding to our question, she raised an interesting point.
“There’s never been a pent-up market for hydrogen vehicles,” Sexton said, “even a small one.”
And that contrasts with the thousands of drivers who’d already experienced electric cars in one form or another by the time the first Nissan Leaf and first Chevy Volt were sold in December 2010.
“I don’t see either the market or the infrastructure materializing” in any way that will put meaningful numbers of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles on the road over the next decade, she said.
