Fuel Cells vs. Electric Vehicles. Which Side of the Alt-Energy Battle Are You On?

The company’s embrace of fuel cells reminds some observers of other significant moments of commitment for Toyota over the decades, including in 1989 when it launched the Lexus luxury brand in the United States, and, in 1997, when it started selling Prius gasoline-electric hybrids.

Now Toyota is bidding again to set the pace with fuel cells, along with other automakers that have been testing the technology. Meanwhile, leading global powertrain supplier Bosch has predicted that falling costs will make fuel-cell technology commercially viable for mass-car production by 2025.

And although a long way off, the success of a hydrogen-based vehicle poses significant benefits for business vehicle fleets and their associated costs.

But is a mass market for hydrogen cars a realistic prospect? Hydrogen power faces much the same challenges as electric-vehicle power in terms of whether a geographically vast America will have enough of a refueling infrastructure in place to make this form of alternative powertrain a truly mainstream phenomenon and to become so outside of a few big cities. In fact, the requirements for making hydrogen filling stations ubiquitous are greater than for populating the country with EV chargers.