Fuel-cell car rally opens Norway's hydrogen highway

Norway opened a 560 kilometre "hydrogen highway" with more than a dozen hydrogen-powered cars rallying along a scenic route between its capital city Oslo and North Sea oil hub Stavanger.

Norwegian oil and gas producer StatoilHydro has built several hydrogen filling stations between the two places to cater for cars with fuel-cells that generate electricity from a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen or burn hydrogen in a combustion engine similar to those in petrol cars.

These zero-emission vehicles have short ranges but promising results, and in the longer-term, Statoil may link the road to a hydrogen autobahn in northern Germany. Japan and California already have hydrogen highways.

Touted as future alternatives to carbon-dioxide emitting petrol engines, the still-experimental hydrogen engines emit only clean water, though it takes energy to produce hydrogen.

Unlike electric motors which take hours to recharge, the nearly silent hydrogen cars can be refuelled in a matter of minutes, much like conventional cars.

"We have to look for additional sources of fuel for the future and we believe hydrogen is a good option, especially as it has the characteristics of a zero-emission fuel and... you could produce hydrogen from many sources," said Ulf Hafseld, head of hydrogen business development at StatoilHydro.

StatoilHydro sells hydrogen in Norway at around 40 Norwegian crowns €5 per kilo, which it says is roughly equal in energy terms to the price of petrol.

The company seeks to keep its hydrogen clean by using energy from Norway's vast hydropower-plants to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas.

Hydrogen can also be produced as an industrial by-product, or even from waste gases such as methane. But all these processes are energy-intensive which limits the attractiveness of hydrogen-powered cars from an environmental perspective.

"A rich country like Norway should help test both hydrogen and electric cars, but I already know what I will be driving in 20 years," said Frederic Hauge, the founder of the Bellonna think-tank, getting into his Tesla, a sporty electric roadster.

Participants in the rally say such driving tests will help improve their vehicles and gradually reduce costs, although state subsidies remain key for any larger-scale projects.

"Oil companies and industry produce a lot of hydrogen, but it's a political issue whether we want to exploit this in the automotive industry," said Fiat researcher Paolo Delzanno, racing a hydrogen fuel cell-powered Fiat Panda.