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In early 13, a low-slung, racy sports coupe with a massive, incongruous power plant jutting from its rear deck appeared in the parking lot of an obscure West Palm Beach research and development start-up known as Energy Partners. Expensive, exotic vehicles were not uncommon along a stretch of Florida coastline dotted with affluent communities. Even by these standards, however, the automobile, dubbed the “Green Car” by its inventors, was unique. Although Ballard Power Systems was then emerging as the premier developer of proton exchange membrane fuel cell technology, testing it in an electric bus at around the same time, the Green Car was the world’s first full-size electric passenger automobile to use this power source technology, hitherto best known for powering NASA’s Gemini spacecraft. But Energy Partners had no intention of producing commercial fuel cell electric automobiles. John H. Perry, Jr., its millionaire chairman, wanted to use the Green Car to advertise the potential of the fuel cell as a power source for zero-emission vehicles, especially for the California market, where stringent new rules enacted in 10 promised to radically reshape the way automobiles were built. But the car itself was not really a practical prototype. A custom-built two-seater, it was cramped, underpowered, and unsuited for travel on public roads. And it was pricey, the power plant alone costing over $180,000, and plagued by assorted troubles. Nevertheless, reported the New York Times, the path to the commercial electric automobile might be cleared if Energy Partners and other companies investigating fuel cells succeeded in weeding out the bugs and cutting costs.1 The implications, suggested the paper of record, were enormous. Perhaps no other consumer product has had as pervasive an effect on society and the environment in the twentieth century as the commercial fossil-fueled, internal combustion automobile. So profound is this influence that scholars use the 125 6 Green Automobile Wars We’re in the position Intel was in 15 years ago with the microprocessor. The fuel cell is a technology that will transform the world. —Firoz Rasul, president and chief executive officer, Ballard Power Systems, February 1998 VVVVVVVVVVV term “automobility” to refer to the vast complex of technologies, institutions, and associated sociocultural values that enable the act of driving, as well as to the act itself.2 For decades, the automobile sector functioned as an industrial Atlas, supporting myriad constellations of metallurgical, chemical, petroleum, and parts enterprises. The automobile became a key source of individual identity , a symbol of modernity and an object of desire for the billions of people for whom automobiles promised figurative and literal social mobility. So, too, have the deleterious effects of automobility—accidents, urban sprawl, resource depletion, and environmental degradation—been systemic.3 The Green Car did not generate much attention at a time when the automotive media were concentrating on the efforts of the major manufacturers to develop battery electric drive autos. Indeed, in the early 10s, electrochemical experts believed no existing fuel cell technology met all the economic and technical criteria for the automotive application. Membrane fuel cells could deliver fast load response and high power in a relatively small volume. But despite being continually improved over the years, such devices remained handicapped by high cost, unreliability, and important materials limitations. A number of researchers favored the alkaline fuel cell for all the traditional reasons: it was a proven technology offering relatively high performance using cheap materials. The main shortcoming of this design, of course, was that it required expensive pure hydrogen fuel. Accordingly, predicted A. J. Appleby, the first fuel cell electric automobile to enter the market would likely be a subsidized fleet vehicle that could be readily fueled and serviced from a central depot. For these reasons, he and others expected that the first commercial fuel cell would be a large and expensive multimegawatt central generating station of the kind that had been under active development by United Technologies Corporation and Westinghouse for years, on the grounds that only this type could capture the large markets and exploit the economies of scale that would justify major investments.4 Events seemed to confound these expectations. By the late 10s, several major automakers were working on membrane fuel cell electric drive and were promising commercial production. What had happened in the interim? Progress in alternative automotive technologies, the economic and environmental contradictions of American automobility, attempts to legislate technological solutions to these problems, and a reappraisal of federal...

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