Meanwhile, students at the University of Birmingham recently built the UK's first hydrogen-powered locomotive.
Even more important, the plasmatron could speed the long- awaited transition to hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles.
The budget for hydrogen-powered vehicles, once the darlings of the alternative-energy lobby, has been slashed.
The truth is that, in energy terms, today's hydrogen-powered vehicles don't help at all.
The know-how exists but the cost of creating a new hydrogen-powered auto sector is now prohibitive.
Most prototype hydrogen-powered vehicles use more energy than the fossil-fuel vehicles they replace.
This week it unveiled a prototype version of its 7-Series saloon car that has a hydrogen-powered engine.
Engineers in the US say they have invented a hydrogen-powered robot that moves through water like a jellyfish.
The hydrogen-powered buses should be on the streets of the city by 2010 in time for the Olympic Games.
At the moment, for example, arcane regulations make it illegal to drive a hydrogen-powered vehicle in much of Europe.
Hands across the aisle: George W. Bush got one thing right: He liked green cars, especially the hydrogen-powered ones.
And if Honda needs to be the one to solve the issue of creating infrastructure to enable hydrogen-powered vehicles, so be it.
But hydrogen-powered cars cannot exist without hydrogen filling stations, and vice versa.
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Tourists who visit Yakushima will be required to ride hydrogen-powered buses.
"As there is no carbon in the fuel, hydrogen-powered vehicles produce no carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or particulate emissions, " said Wrightbus business development director Jonathan Poynton.
In fact, both the national energy labs as well as the auto companies are laboring, with Toyota saying it wants to have a hydrogen-powered sedan ready next decade.
Filling a typical fuel tank of 75 litres about 20 American gallons with hydrogen at room temperature and pressure will take a hydrogen-powered car only about a kilometre or so.
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The final blow was last year's announcement by Steven Chu, America's Nobel physics laureate turned energy secretary, that he was cancelling funding for research into hydrogen-powered vehicles generally.
GM--its market share dropping like a heavy molecule, its bonds near junk, its vehicles piling up in dealer lots-is making its single biggest research bet on developing a hydrogen-powered car.
Imagining hydrogen-powered cars and buses in Yosemite and Yellowstone is a little more difficult, given the unpredictable snowfall and the fact that visitors to U.S. parks drive in from cities where gasoline remains the norm.
California regulators voted to mandate major automakers substantially increase the numbers of electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell-powered models in their fleets in the coming years, eventually accounting for 15.4 percent of all vehicles sold in the state by 2025.
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After spending a recent weekend tooling around suburban Detroit in a hydrogen fuel-cell-powered Honda Motor FCX , I was struck by a remarkable image: By the time my 9-year-old daughter is shopping for her first car, she may well be considering an entirely different kind of automobile--one that runs on hydrogen, not gasoline.
Led by Prof Michael Hoffman, the toilet they designed was solar-powered and generated hydrogen gas and electricity.
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It is powered by a hydrogen fuel-cell engine, which converts hydrogen gas into energy.
And United Technologies, which makes Sikorsky helicopters, has flown a large model electric-helicopter powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.
First it was hydrogen fuel-cells, then ethanol-powered cars, then plug-ins.
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And in Detroit, BMW will showcase its 750hL, a large, 7-Series sedan with a nearly conventional V-12 motor powered by compressed hydrogen.
The FCX, on the other hand, runs on the world's most plentiful element--hydrogen--and doesn't produce any of the pollution that today's gasoline-powered cars do.
The same hindrances are lodged at other alternative-energy vehicles, such as those powered by hydrogen and natural gas.
It's powered by a hydrogen internal combustion engine that turns a 44-kilowatt electric generator that runs eight propellers and whatever communications equipment is loaded on board.
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