Honda will release an automobile that uses hydrogen as fuel; the car will be available in Japan and in a few parts of California starting in the autumn of 2008.
Automobiles are part of a system that includes roads, traffic signals, repair shops, spare parts manufacturers, and — above all — fuel supplies. The world has a fine network of gas stations, and it's easy enough to run an electrical cable to an outlet to re-charge an electric car; but introducing an entirely new type of fuel means building entirely new and expensive infrastructure.
The creation of this new infrastructure is a problem in disaggregation that has yet to be solved. I suspect that the solution will lie in some interesting new thinking about what it means to be an automobile manufacturer, what it means to be a service station, and what it means to be a public utility.
Topics: · government · technology
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