Fuel-cell cars great, but you can't have one

0 Comments | USA TODAY, November, 2007 | by James R. Healey

Driving automakers' ever-improving hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles is a setup for a letdown.

They are getting to be so good, so ordinary, so much like any other vehicle in the way they drive, that you start thinking you ought to just go get one. After all, they issue no pollutants, and they go about twice as far as gasoline vehicles do on the same amount of energy.

The vehicles themselves use no petroleum, though producing the hydrogen requires energy, some of which might come from petroleum fuels.

Automakers' grand design is that energy suppliers eventually will make hydrogen using renewable fuels such as biomass, hydroelectricity, solar, wind and others perhaps not yet conceived. Only then will a fuel-cell machine be petroleum-free -- as long as you...