Gregg Easterbrook's appraisal of the plan for H-powered cars is devsatating, but I see a lot of hope in what he says too. Yes, it's a smokescreen by the Bush admin, and yes, the funding is probably inadequate. But it sounds like this technology has real potential, if we put our backs into it. I've been disappointed, reading the response to this since the State of the Union. It was the one thing that piqued my interest at the time.

One thing about the article confuses me. On the one hand he says that H-powered cars are not really H-powered cars - that ultimately the power comes from elsewhere and the hydrogen is just the medium for it - essentially part of an electrolysis battery. But the bulk of his argument is about how hydrogen must be obtained from hydrocarbons, which are found primarily in fossil fules. Surely the amount of hydrogen in a battery would be trivial compared with the amount of gasoline we burn now in our cars, since the hydrogen wouldn't be destroyed in the reaction.

I think he must be wrong on the first count - this technology is actually about burning hydrogen with oxygen, not charging hydrogen batteries.