On September 8th, eight car companies signed a joint Letter of Understanding calling for the initial hydrogen fueling stations to be built by 2015. This was truly a historic moment as pretty much the entire auto industry showed their commitment to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
You can view a copy of the letter at the following link.
The letter was addressed to oil companies, energy companies, and government organizations. It was signed by Toyota, Honda, Daimler, Hyundai, Kia, Ford, GM/Opel, and the Alliance Renault/Nissan.
Here are three excerpts from the letter:
“Based on current knowledge and subject to a variety of prerequisites and conditions, the signing OEMs strongly anticipate that from 2015 onwards a quite significant number of fuel cell vehicles could be commercialised. This number is aimed at a few hundred thousand units over life cycle on a worldwide basis.
All OEMs involved will implement their own specific production and commercial strategies and timelines, and, as a consequence, depending on various influencing factors, the commercialisation of fuel cell vehicles may occur earlier than in the above-mentioned expected year.”
“In order to ensure a successful market introduction of fuel cell vehicles, this market introduction has to be aligned with the build-up of the necessary hydrogen infrastructure. Therefore a hydrogen infrastructure network with sufficient density is required by 2015.”
“The signing OEMs strongly support the idea of building-up a hydrogen infrastructure in Europe, with Germany as starting point and at the same time developing similar concepts for the market penetration of hydrogen infrastructure in other regions of the world, with one US market, Japan and Korea as further starting points.”
[Photo credit: National Hydrogen Association]
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