This article focuses on fuel cell vehicle that has a long way to go. Maybe those part electric-powered, part gasoline-burning cars will help clear the way. Computer diagnostic tools, such as computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis, are helping to uncover the ways in which the various media that make up fuel cell stacks compress and how they respond to bipolar plate stresses, to name but two examples of research. Experimental measurement tools were helping researchers to visualize flow, measure temperatures directly, and understand compression distribution. Fuel cells have not become the simple solid-state devices that were predicted initially. Hydrogen has not become any more readily available than it was five years ago. Bridges weigh little compared with the land masses they ordinarily connect. Hybrids may never reach the sales volume that traditional internal combustion engine cars now enjoy, or that fuel cell cars may one day reach.

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