$150,000 clean car runs on hydrogen
By John O'Dell
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — So, where do you fill up a $150,000 hydrogen-fueled sports car?
The two-seat Hydrogen Shelby Cobra — built by auto legend Carroll Shelby — is now available for order from Hydrogen Car Co., a 9-month-old Los Angeles company.
The Cobra's internal combustion V-8 engine burns hydrogen, making it cleaner and more fuel- efficient than any of its gasoline-gulping Shelby siblings.
The difficulty in answering the question about a fill-up is that hydrogen filling stations are hardly on every corner.
In California, there are just 13 of them. Operating one requires special training and attention to safety concerns.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to see hydrogen stations at 20-mile intervals along California's major freeways by 2010, though there's no money behind his dream. There's a federal program aimed at opening at least 24 hydrogen stations in the state, but nobody in Washington, D.C., has set a date, or handed over money, for construction to start.
That makes for slim pickings if you want to take the Cobra for a long drive.
It packs the equivalent of 4 gallons of gas in its special pressurized fuel tanks. Even though it can get upward of 25 miles to the gallon, it can only travel about 100 miles before needing a fill-up.
That's not too steep a price to pay, says Hydrogen Car's chairman, S. David Freeman. If enough hydrogen cars are sold to powerful people, perhaps political pressure for hydrogen fueling stations will grow, he said.
Freeman, 78, who once ran the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and helped start Hydrogen Car, said the first Shelbys could be delivered in six months. He said one of the company's missions was to speed the much-hyped anti-gasoline revolution by getting hydrogen-powered cars on streets now, instead of waiting for fuel-cellipowered electric vehicles to be perfected.
Prices for the Shelby cars will vary from $149,000 to $175,000 for a top-of-the-line model rated at 400 horsepower. "Carroll has assured us that there are people out there who will buy any car he makes, even if it runs on hot air," Freeman said.
Shelby, 81, is an automotive icon. His 1960s-era Shelby Mustangs were classic muscle cars that are now treasured collection pieces. (He has produced some gas-powered Cobra sports cars, built by Shelby Automobiles in Las Vegas, that sell from $80,000 on up.)
The Hydrogen Shelby Colby deal that Freeman and partners Ari Swiller and Cole Frates signed with Shelby call for him to convert standard Cobra engines from gas to hydrogen power. The cars will be assembled at Shelby's engine plant in Gardena, Calif.
"If we can start hydrogen off with the most exciting cars on the road, and then move into the sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks ... then maybe we can disconnect people from the image of these kinds of cars as too small and limited," Freeman said.
That is "a welcome development," but not critical to the future of a hydrogen-fueled transportation system, said Aaron Rachlin, manager of clean fuels for Praxair Inc., the company that is helping to develop California's government-financed hydrogen fueling network.
