Driving towards sustainability

Ron Dell and David Rand – authors of the Royal Society of Chemistry's forthcoming book on Clean Energy – examine the relative prospects of fuel cell and hybrid electric vehicles as more efficient and cleaner alternatives to present automobiles.

Nobody can deny that great strides have been made in the technology and engineering of fuel cells during the past twenty years. As a result of this effort, prototype and demonstration units are now delivering promising performance. Despite such progress, however, many issues remain:

•which of the half-dozen different types of fuel cell will be . . .