Affordable mass-produced fuel cells have been on the technological horizon for a while now. In the mid nineties there was talk of how we would all be wearing fuel cells on our belts to keep our cell phones charged. Now a Shanghai company called Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies has introduced a unique miniature fuel cell car and hydrogen refueling station. It isn’t exactly the Tesla Roadster, but it does represent a step forward in fuel cell miniaturization.

The H-racer comes with a solar powered refueling station that generates hydrogen to power the fuel cell. Fill the car and it will run 100 meters in a straight line. Okay so maybe kids in Shanghai demand less fun from their toys but that’s not a bad distance considering the car is only 16 cm by 7cm with the fuel cell generating 500 milliamps at 0.6 volts.

Fuel cells hold great promise for a variety of applications with robotics being at the forefront. Could development of cheap reliable fuel cells be the killer application that we have been waiting for that will finally herald the first true personal robots? A robotic companion could take the place of a laptop – as long as you didn’t need to charge it every 2 hours. Perhaps Horizon can get a generation of kids excited about fuel cells through toys and one day soon the oft-promised portable fuel cell will be a reality.

Get the H-racer at Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies.         

 

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