It is not a question of 'if' but 'when'. The fuel cell - an on-board electricity generator - is now accepted as the power source for a future generation of cars. Honda set the pace a couple of years ago when it declared that it would have a fuel cell vehicle out in the market in 2003. Other manufacturers blanched at this idea but Toyota has since said that it too will have fuel cell cars in private hands by 2003, although it does not believe that they will be a commercial proposition until 2010.

This is not because fuel cell cars can't be ready for the world in two years' time. It is a cost issue. At the Tokyo Motor Show, Honda president Hiroyuki Yoshino admitted that the fuel cell cars that will be out there in 2003 will be a very small number - 'perhaps a dozen' - restricted to the Toyko area where hydrogen gas fuelling will be available. Toyota will have rather more, up to 100 cars, but it has not yet been decided if they will be based on the US-market Highlander sport-utility like the prototype FCHV4 (pics above and below) that I drove at a test track in the shadow of Mount Fuji.

The Toyota seemed more market-ready than the Honda FCX-V3 which is the gawky Honda electric car with fuel cell in place of the EV's battery pack. The Highlander has the fuel cell stack and drive motor in the front and hydrogen tanks under the high floor at the back; no accommodation is lost compared with the petrol-powered original.

How far off reality are fuel cell prices? Honda's Yoshino talks about having to reduce the cost 100 times before these are a viable proposition and needing some breakthrough in research to reduce the dependence on precious metals for the fuel cell's catalyst coating: "If we are to build these in volume I am not sure that there is enough of these materials in the world." Toyota won't put a figure on the cost of its pilot production cars but one executive said ruefully "they cost as much as a Formula 1 car." So 2 million dollars apiece is probably about right - and still a very long way from a substitute for today's family car.

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