Honda Likely to Sell Fuel-cell Cars This Year

GOTEMBA, Japan, July 25 Reuters is repoteing that Honda Motor Co will likely put its first fuel-cell vehicle on the market by the end of the year, matching rival Toyota Motor Corp.

"It will probably happen, though I can't say how many we will sell as we don't know how many potential customers are out there," Honda President Hiroyuki Yoshino said on the sidelines of a business group forum.

Toyota said earlier this month it planned to market a fuel-cell passenger car this year, but the high cost of the vehicles means it will leased just 20 in the first 12 months to government bodies, research institutions and energy companies.

DaimlerChrysler AG first brought to market a limited series of fuel-cell buses in 2000 but fuel-cell passenger cars have yet to be sold.

Other major automakers have pledged to begin marketing the environmentally-friendly vehicles from next year or 2004.

Emitting only heat and water as by-products, fuel cells use an electrochemical process to create electricity by mixing hydrogen with oxygen.

However, hydrogen in its natural gaseous state is difficult to store and distribute, so fuel-cell vehicles for the ordinary consumer are not likely any time soon.

Toyota has said it does not expect full commercialisation of fuel-cell vehicles until at least 2010, as technology and industry standards are not yet in place.

Honda's Yoshino said fuel-cell developments were impossible to predict.

"For example, fuel-cell cars use plenty of platinum for catalysts and there is not enough supply of it in the world for that. So we are looking for a breakthrough in catalyst technology and nobody knows when that is going to come," he said.

The fuel-cell vehicles from both companies will only be available in Japan and the United States, where hydrogen supply stations exist