Survey: When will hydrogen fuel be readily available in America?
A survey of Green Car Reports' Twitter followers has revealed that 60% think hydrogen will "never" be available throughout the US, while 20% expect availability by 2030 or later, 12% by 2025, and 6% by 2020. Hydrogen stations cost as much as $2m per location to build.

While you might think that any zero-emission vehicle would be viewed as a good thing, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles continue to generate opposition among some electric-car fans.

Perhaps viewing them as competition for long-range battery electric vehicles of the sort now planned by virtually every carmaker, they produce huge volumes of comments every time we write about them.

Now we have some data to show how well the Twitter followers of Green Car Reports think they can do in the market.

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We simply polled those followers about when they thought that hydrogen fuel for vehicles would be available throughout the U.S.

The rough analogy would be as available as gasoline is today, at more than 100,000 separate fueling station locations throughout the 50 states.

The results were revealing.

When will hydrogen fuel be available everywhere in the U.S.? — Green Car Reports (@GreenCarReports) August 24, 2016

More than six out of 10 Twitter followers who responded to the poll said hydrogen will "never" be available throughout the U.S.

The remaining 38 percent of votes were split several ways, with the next most common group being "2030 or later," chosen by 20 percent of respondents.

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The choice of "2025" got only 12 percent of the votes, and the nearest-term answer, 2020, garnered a measly 6 percent of supporters.

In other words, the readers who responded to the poll really, really don't believe that hydrogen-fueled vehicles will ever become ubiquitous.

Honda Clarity teaser image, April 2016

The difference in zero-emission vehicle powertrains, of course, is that electricity in some form is generally found within a short distance of almost everywhere that cars are parked.

The same can't be said for hydrogen, which must be dispensed at pressures up to 10,000 pounds per square inch from pumps on specialized sites that currently run as high as $2 million per location to build.

CHECK OUT: New hydrogen fueling station closer to throughput of gasoline

We look forward to comparing the results of this poll to our latest poll, running now, which asks the same question—with the same set of date choices—about DC fast-charging instrastructure for electric cars.

Stay tuned for that one.

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