Tom's Hardware Article:

Toyota's First Hydrogen Car to Cost $50,000

The article specifies that there isn't really a car that will be released soon, just that Toyota is going to wait until the costs of a H2 car must be under $50 grand before they will sell them. Currently, it would cost a customer approx. $1 million to buy a H2 car.

What I think here is that, yes, the advancing tech in automobiles is great. And even better, they are greener, and safer. But really, what I think is many of the people don't understand some of the basic science behind some of these innovations. This 'hydrogen' car is actually hydrogen fuel cell. Which is pretty much somehow making H2 charge and run batteries that will power electric motors to run cars.

Is it me, or are they creating extra steps? Hydrogen, as a flammable and explosive gas, has the potential energy to combust and power an internal combustion engine -- just like gasoline. The only difference? Combustion of hydrogen gas only produces 2 substances as discharge: pure water, and oxygen. Sounds like a win-win to me. Why make the whole maze and round-about of creating batteries of hydrogen, which then power motors, which then move the car? Just make the engines run off of hydrogen!

A while ago, there was a farmer who had his 2 trucks run off of water. The contraption he had in the beds of the trucks would extract the hydrogen from the purified water, then use the hydrogen in a slightly modified engine in the truck. The thing got like 75 miles to a gallon of hydrogen. Then, of course, soon after the local news aired the story, the man mysteriously dies of poisoning. Sounds like the men in black from Big Oil got to him, before they destroyed their multi-trillion dollar industry.

I think people with this kind of ingenuity should be at the forefront of our development. Not the greedy politician, not the aloof tech-heads... but honest-to-goodness, sensible people with a bright idea and the basic know-how of things. We really already have the technology -- it's the people with large amounts of money they are afraid to lose, that are crippling our progress.