Fuel Cells Carry High Price Tag

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Byline: Ted Biederman, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

There are more problems than infrastructure slowing the advancement of fuel cells as a means of powering vehicles.

The high cost of platinum and the amount needed of the precious metal for mass-market volumes is another main barrier to the development of market-viable fuel cell cars, according to a senior engineer at Nissan Motor Corp.

Masashi Arita, general manager of Nissan's powertrain and environment research lab, has said: "The most critical technical issue is how to reduce the cost of the stack itself." The "stack" refers to the multilevel design of fuel cells that hold, separate and eventually …