The province’s original car-sharing co-operative has teamed with a Korean automaker to offer hydrogen-powered vehicles to its membership.
But with no public hydrogen fuelling stations, the concept was a non-starter. That changed when last year Shell, working with the B.C. government, opened one of Canada’s first public fuelling stations in Vancouver’s Marpole community. “Our initial idea was to do some kind of car-sharing, and we knew Vancouver would be the market we wanted to do it in,” noted Don Romano, president and CEO of Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. “But it had to be the right kind of company, and we found the entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well in .Romano said his company hopes to pursue other such partnerships with other car-sharing companies in other Canadian cities, citing Montreal as the next logical one after Vancouver.
Second, unlike electricity with its established cross-country grid, hydrogen gas needs to be transported by truck and stored at stations, creating a carbon footprint. Likewise, the North American production of hydrogen gas — using electricity in a process called electrolysis — is typically powered by fossil fuels, specifically natural gas and coal.