London's Black Cab's Going GREEN, Is Hydrogen Making A Comeback?

And just when you thought hydrogen was dead, it pulls you back in.

London, noted for its unbelievable traffic and its legendary black cabs, has decided to conduct what is essentially an experiment. By 2012 the city will begin implementing hydrogen fuel cell cabs. This is all in an effort to curb the city's emissions by 2020. Definitely an ambitious goal.

Do you think London can do it? Eight years is not a lot of time...

A fleet of hydrogen fuel cell powered black cabs will be on London's roads by 2012 as part of plans to make the capital's taxis tailpipe emissions free by 2020.

A prototype Fuel Cell Hybrid London taxi has been unveiled at City Hall this morning and is the work of a consortium of companies, including Lotus Engineering. London is looking to clean up its air quality, much polluted by diesel fumes from taxis and buses, and this taxi is one of its first steps in tackling the problem.

Kit Malthouse, chair of London's hydrogen partnership, said pollution from black cabs needed to be addressed...

[Source: Autocar]

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Joe_Limon - 6/7/2010 12:51:13 PM

-2 Boost

"Curb the cities emissions"

Doesn't really have a value assigned to it... if I could get one person to quit smoking, technically I curbed the cities emissions... and it didn't take 8 years either...

But getting hydrogen cab's? That can all be done in a single mass purchase, or many smaller ones over the years, I don't see how it isn't possible.

Steve - 6/7/2010 1:02:16 PM

+4 Boost

Hydrogen *is* dead. See references to "Freedom Car" (Pres.G.W. Bush administration). It just takes some folks longer to get with the program. And yes, some can still be duped, as we see here.

Technically, all taxis servicing London could fill up in the 1 Hydrogen filling station in London ;-) The issue is still in finding an environmentally clean, economically feasible way to convert the abundant hydrogen on Earth into a usable form for auto fuel. See my previous posts on this topic for lots more detail about this debacle.

Whelan - 6/8/2010 12:00:26 PM

+1 Boost

They coulb easily curb emissions if they made the cars more aerodynamic.