But, of course, a fuel-cell car is an electric car, albeit with a complicated hydrogen battery.
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The orientation also makes for a much lower center of gravity than a typical fuel-cell car.
Daimler Benz (which already produces an advanced fuel-cell car) recently bought 27% of Ballard, a maker of fuel cells.
So, a hydrogen fuel-cell car even running ... on hydrogen derived from natural gas cuts that carbon emission by 60%.
Also a type of electric vehicle, a fuel-cell car takes hydrogen gas and converts it into electricity, while emitting only water vapor.
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The Equinox, GM's fourth-generation fuel-cell car, has an electric motor which has no fuel injection, no pistons, no transmission, no motor oil.
Healy and Brewster dream of people someday driving a fuel-cell car up to an Enernoc meter during peak demand and pumping electricity back into the grid.
Little, a consultancy that has investigated the matter, the running costs to a driver of a fuel-cell car that gets its hydrogen from natural gas would be comparable to those of one that used clean petrol.
No automaker has yet to offer a fuel-cell-powered car for sale to customers, although Honda has said it plans to lease a number of the fuel-cell cars to customers as soon as 2008.
The carmakers hope to launch "the world's first affordable, mass-market fuel cell car" by 2017.
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Within a few years, nearly every big car maker plans to have fuel-cell cars on the road.
Every big car maker now has a fuel-cell programme, and every big oil firm is busy investigating how best to feed these new cars their hydrogen.
The other main joint venture, Ford-led Ecostar, takes the machinery from Stuttgart and fits it into electric motors, transmission and control equipment to make a fuel-cell engine that can turn the wheels of a car or a bus.
Larry Moulthroup of Proton Energy Systems in Connecticut, which lent me my fuel-cell Toyota Highlander, offers some thoughts on how the water car might work.
In the fuel-cell stack, hydrogen goes in and electricity comes out, which then powers the car.
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One of the things that car companies fret about is how fuel will be delivered in a fuel-cell world.
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