Fancy a green car, dole out $1 million

Neha Lalchandani, TNN 12 December 2009, 03:29am IST

Source: TOI

NEW DELHI: Green technology is green not just because it is environmentally friendly but could probably have a lot to do with the money involved.

As India is battling to make its hydrogen-CNG vehicles more affordable, Japan is facing similar problems with its zero-emission hydrogen cars. Priced at $1 million at present, there are only about 65 such vehicles in the Japanese and American markets - most of them are run on trial basis. Automobile companies have been given the mandate to bring the price down to about $.1 by 2015.

Fuminori Yamanashi, manager of the Nissan Research Centre's Fuel Cell Laboratory, in Delhi to participate in the ongoing Envirotech at Pragati Maidan, says that hydrogen used to fuel the cars will be converted to electricity and it is this technology that is making the vehicles very expensive. "At Nissan, we have manufactured only about 18 fuel cell vehicles, 10 of which are in Japan and the remaining are in the US. Of these, only four are on limited lease with the Japanese government using two and another being used for taxi services," he said.

Since the vehicles run on electricity, they have absolutely no emissions. The fuel cell technology uses elements of a variety of technologies including electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles and compressed natural gas vehicle technology. Pure hydrogen is pumped into the vehicle which is directed towards the fuel cell that converts it to electricity. Such vehicles do not have an engine but run on a motor powered by electricity.

The Japanese government, through the new energy and industrial technology and development organization, is funding 15 hydrogen stations across Japan and has mandated that automobile companies improve the technology to bring the prices down to one tenth of their current value. "These vehicles cannot be made commercially available right now since they are very expensive. We are targeting 2015 for mass production by which time we can hopefully bring down the prices to about $.1 million per vehicle. We hope to further reduce the prices to as low as $.02-.03 million after 2020," he added.

In India, while a consensus for an optimum blend of 18% of hydrogen and CNG has been arrived at, the greener fuel will be made available only in another two years or so. Officials say that production of hydrogen is expensive at present and that they would not be able to find a market for such expensive vehicles.