WASHINGTON-The auto and oil industries have begun lobbying Washington for taxpayer help in bankrolling the billions of dollars that will be necessary to get fuel cell cars onto the road.
Depending on which company you ask, General Motors Corp. or the Royal Dutch-Shell Group, it could cost anywhere from $10 billion to $19 billion to build enough hydrogen fueling stations to make fuel cell vehicles a viable option for consumers. These estimates overwhelm the $2 billion that the Bush administration had proposed spending on hydrogen infrastructure over the next 5 years. General Motors and Shell officials stress that their estimates are only a start-and largely guesses.