2020 VISION :-((

A media report that came in via Google Alerts this morning said we are unlikely to see FCVs (fuel-cell vehicles) mass-produced before 2020, and that GM, which used to say it would be doing that by 2010 now only says that it will have a validated FC power-train by then. Toyota has already said that it does not expect to be making FCVs en masse till 2030.

Why?

Because they do not care sufficiently for the planet or their children. They care more for the profit they can make from mass-producing the death-machines that by their very nature they have a monopoly on. They must have realised that once electric cars, specifically FCVs, are THE form of tranpsort their monopoly on vehicles will evaporate. They day they switch from ICVs (internal-combustion vehicles) to FCVs is the day they sign their death-warrants. So they would rather sign ours. The tragic irony of course that they are also signing theirs. Global-overheating is global: car companies will be just as affected as their victims.

Dead people cannot make cars. They cannot buy cars. They cannot contribute to the economy. They cannot work. They cannot buy things. They cannot sell things. All they can do is lie about under ground or sit in urns. The true bottom line of all human activity is human life and the quality of human life. Not money. You can make money from life; you can make it only if you are alive. You cannot make life with money. If life and the quality of life are not regarded as the bottom line the ultimate consequence is always death--the death of countless people, the death of your company.

We have the technology to make FCVs now. We know they work; we have proved them over and over again with hundreds of test vehicles. For instance, the small world-wide fleet of FCV buses running on Ballard fuel-cells (which are not the best because they have graphite bipolar plates) has just clocked up a million kilometres. How many million does it take to prove the point while global-overheating accelerates?

We licked the problem of making bipolar plates out of metal, and thus also the problem of mass-production. We licked the problem of high-pressure storage bottles. We have had electrolyte membranes, the PEMs (proton-exchange membranes), for years, and Du Pont has announced even better ones, as have other manufacturers. So we can get all the bits off the shelf, which means we can--right now--make fuel-cells by the zillions. Why aren't we? Because profit, profit-by-death, is preferable to life and the quality of life.

Insane but true.