HONOLULU (AP) - Hydrogen-powered vehicles are beginning to roll onto Hawaii’s transportation scene.
Two 25-seat hydrogen-powered buses will soon be shuttling tourists between the visitors center and the Thurston Lava Tube at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, and hydrogen might someday fuel the Wiki-Wiki shuttles at Honolulu Airport.
There are two hydrogen fueling stations on Oahu: one at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay and one at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. They serve several vehicles on the bases but are not available to the public.
Hydrogen fuel vehicles run on hydrogen gas rather than gasoline and emit no harmful tailpipe emissions. Toyota introduced a fuel-cell car, the Mirai, last year.
Gov. David Ige signed a bill into law in June creating a state working group for hydrogen.
“As soon as it was signed, I already had a working group ready to stand up,†said Stan Osserman, director of the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies.
Osserman’s company is converting to hydrogen the two 25-seat buses for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Hydrogen-fueled cars have two main advantages over their battery-powered rivals, said Salim Morsy, a New-York based analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. They are faster to refuel and have much longer ranges than electric ones. A hydrogen car can refuel in five minutes and go 400 miles on one tank. Many electric vehicles take up to seven hours to charge and can travel only 200 miles on each charge.
Hydrogen cars also have disadvantages. Producing the hydrogen can involve burning fossil fuels and contributing to greenhouse gases. The current lack of fueling stations also makes the vehicles impractical.
Elon Musk, CEO?of electric car company Tesla Motors, has argued that most commercial hydrogen used to run fuel cells is made from natural gas in a process that consumes energy and emits carbon. Hydrogen is also dangerous to store and transport, he has said.
Still, Osserman said Hawaii and federal officials are planning to convert state vehicles to hydrogen and support the electric grid with the renewable fuel.
Two hydrogen fueling stations planned on Hawaii island at Volcanoes National Park will be the first to serve the public.
Mitch Ewan, systems program manager for Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, said the first station for shuttles on the Big island would be in place by the end of September and the second one at Volcanoes National Park in October.
Ewan said adding the stations will help the deployment of hydrogen in Hawaii as the institute has seen a lot of interest from automobile dealers.
“The automobile dealers are all in now. The challenge for us is to have minimal infrastructure in place for someone to fuel their vehicles,�he said.
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