Comm: "You're looking at the future. These cars seem normal but they run on a 100% clean remarkable new technology - the hydrogen fuel cell. They could end pollution overnight. But it's not happening. Why? How long do we have to wait before everyone's driving one?"

Detlef Frank, BMW Research Chief: "Environmentalist always require the new thing, here right now with no extra expense.

"Now I think frankly speaking that's bloody nonsense."

Comm: "And there's a major struggle between big auto and big government."

Dr. Alan Lloyd Chairman, Californian Air Resources Board: "The history we've had at the Air Resources Board is that using the carrot has not been as successful; using the stick has been most successful."

Comm: "But there's one place in the world that's immune to these power struggles. By the year 2030 Iceland will not only be using these fuelcell buses - the whole country will be powered by hydrogen.

"The hot misty pools of northern Iceland...steaming with geothermal energy, enough to end Iceland's dependence on oil...enough power to drive an alternative clean economy, using hydrogen.

"These hot springs inspired Bragi Árnason dream. 30 years ago he saw the potential in Iceland's untapped treasure."

Prof. Bragi Árnason: "Some people thought I was crazy and others were laughing. I went to my old friend and colleague Professor Sigurgeirsson and he said that if you think that this can be realised in 30 years then it is necessary to present it now because it takes a long time to get it into the heads of people.

"I began an extensive research work about how much energy there we have in the underground water systems in the country especially the hot ground water systems. It's a huge energy.

"At that time we were importing more than 40% of the energy we used in the country as a fossil fuel but we had only harnessed a small fraction of our energy sources.

"Couldn't we change this situation? Couldn't we somehow use our domestic energy sources to replace imported fuel?"

Comm: "Our dependency on oil is not just an economic problem. We've even killed each other over it.

"Plus, gasoline emissions threaten our health and environment. More sobering still, we'll soon run out of oil.

"Renewable sources such as geothermal or the sun are the obvious solution. But how do we harness this energy for everyday use - especially in the cars we drive?

"From Prof. Árnason's dream of alternative energy in Iceland to a sci-fi fantasy in Aspen, Colorado. The Hypercar. It has no emissions and needs no oil. It's powered by hydrogen - a clean fuel made from water using the world's infinite solar energy or Iceland's abundant geothermal power."

Dr. Jon Fox-Rubin - COO Hypercar: "It's a full-scale prototype of 100 mile per gallon fuel cell vehicle that we've developed. It gets zero sixty in eight seconds zero- sixty mile in eight seconds and will go 330 miles on 7 and half pound of compressed hydrogen.

"We have an interior that has two side sticks that control the vehicle. It also has a very unique user interface and a nice occupant environment that's a fair amount different from today's vehicles.

"Because hydrogen may not be readily available on every corner by the time the vehicles are in the market this user interface will tell the driver when they're getting out of range of a fuelling station it will say hey would you like me to re-route you to the nearest fuelling station.

"If you come over here I will show some of the performance criteria with other vehicles. Our vehicle goes zero to sixty two or zero to 100 kilometres per hour in about eight seconds, the Cross Lexis RX300 here goes zero to 100 in about nine seconds. The Ford explorer in about eight point four. So it's very competitive from acceleration stand point. The difference is our vehicle produces absolutely no emissions and goes 330 miles on seven pounds of compressed hydrogen.

"My dream is really of a car that performs well, creates excitement for the customer but doesn't continue to tax our precious natural resources. In a sense it becomes part of the solution as opposed to part of the problem."

Comm: "Using hydrogen to power cars, and indeed an entire economy, was Professor Árnason's vision 30 years ago. To replace oil and at the same time use, rather than waste, Iceland's tremendous geothermal energy reserves - acknowledging it would take two generations to make the transition from petroleum to hydrogen. But how, in practice, would a hydrogen economy work?

"Already embarked on transforming its economy to hydrogen, Iceland has tapped its renewable geothermal and hydro-electric power to produce electricity. It's distributed all over Iceland and even powers a hydrogen plant on the outskirt of Rekyjavik, the capital.

"Inside the plant 3,300 amps of electrical current surge through huge tightly packed electrolytic cells splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then piped outside and stored in this gasometer.

"This hydrogen is used to make fertiliser but it could power buses, cars and ships. That, however, depends on the hydrogen powered fuel cell.

"The fuel cell is the key technological breakthrough. Even though the principle has been around for over a hundred years, till now no one could make it small or powerful enough.

"A fuel cell is a sandwich 2 plates coated with catalyst on either side of a plastic membrane.

"Hydrogen and oxygen are fed through channels in the plates - hydrogen on one side, oxygen on the other.

"The hydrogen and the oxygen are attracted to one another, but only part of the hydrogen can pass through the membrane.

"The other part, the electron, has to take the long way around an external circuit. That creates the electricity.

"Then the oxygen joins with the hydrogen. The by-products? Pure water and heat.

"As long as hydrogen is supplied, a fuel cell will operate continuously.

"By combining single cells, you make a fuel cell stack, to produce the required amount of power in a complete power-generating system.

"Bigger systems can produce enough electricity to power a skyscraper or a large vehicle like a bus."

Radio voice: "KNX News time, 8:44.

"Lets go on to the free ways for the latest. Here's Jim Thorton.

"Larry Beraha is guarding the 210.

"Looking at you right out of Ervindale not that bad of a ride until you get towards Huntingdon. There…"

Comm: "Heading for L.A. to check out the futuristic cars which could transform this choking, smoggy journey."

Radio voice: "On the cross parkway an accident being reported now possibly with lanes blocked two cars and they're saying it they're cleaning off to the right shoulder now. I'll be back in six minutes with more traffic in KNX."

Fuel cell official: "On behalf of the Californian fuel cell partnership I want to wish you all a good welcome and good morning here to the largest gathering in one point in time in Southern California of fuel cells."

Comm: "Old meets new at the L.A. Coliseum. Four of the world's leading auto companies parade their fuel cell cars. It's a test drive for local and international journalists. These cars don't look space age, in fact they look like the car in your garage at home. But they would clean up this city instantaneously. Powered by fuel cells they emit nothing but clean, distilled water."

Peter Bellwood, journalist: "It's a very interesting sensation because you have a feeling of effortlessness as you gain power. I'm going to make a left now, no."

Daimler Chrysler engineer: "That's it."

Peter Bellwood, journalist: "Right here?"

Daimler Chrysler engineer: "Left here."

Peter Bellwood, journalist: "OK, left here. I mean the accelerating is really quite that amazing. It's the actual power of the engine...in an unexpected in a way, you know."

Daimler Chrysler engineer: "Yeah. It's a single gear, single drive system no transmission it just takes off. The electric motor has a lot of torque unlike an internal combustion engine so we don't need a transmission. It's just one to one. Takes off like a train does."

Peter Bellwood, journalist: "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Daimler Chrysler engineer: "Our target is going to be like what an internal combustion vehicle is, that's what people expect. They want to go to the pump, fill it up, drive it for 250, 350, 400 mile and then fill it up again."

Peter Bellwood, journalist: "Sits on the road like a rock. All the qualities of the Mercedes. Corners beautifully."

Daimler Chrysler engineer: "Well with mass production we're going to have to get the cost down in to the low 20s I think to be a viable product otherwise they're going to be too expensive I think people won't buy them."

Comm: "Cost is a major problem. So, too, are refuelling stations. Where can you buy hydrogen?

"Driving north to Sacramento, home of the Californian fuel cell partnership. Everything happens first in California, including the move toward renewable energy. The state is so big, so rich and powerful, it can force the world's car companies to speed up the transition to clean transport.

"Our days after the test drive in L.A., the Californian Fuel cell Partnership hosted a technical forum at its base in Northern California. The aim? To create a hydrogen infrastructure, gas stations for example, for the cars to use.

"This time the auto makers are showing their wares to other businessmen."

Wolfgang Weiss, Daimler Chrysler: "That's a very famous A class. The smallest Mercedes which is available in Germany or in Europe. You can not see a combustion engine because this car is powered by a fuel cell. You see it's not much different to our car we sell to the public. We also have a shift here. The only difference is you have to put it in drive if you want to drive forward or backward you put it to the rear. It's very easy to handle this car.

"So if you follow me we installed a mirror beyond the car so you are able to see the different parts of this car. Now you get a view under the car. Two of the tanks are in front of the rear axle. One is behind the rear axle and we capture about 2.5 kilometres of hydrogen."

Comm: "The hydrogen makers are there too, showing a machine that can make hydrogen in your garage - like having your very own home gas station."

Leo Varlese, Stuart Energy: "We just take standard tap water and electrical service that you find in your household and we produce hydrogen for your vehicle.

"It's as simple as this we take your hose we take your power cord. Plug it into the wall here. Hook your garden hose up. Take the nozzle. Open your fuelling door on your vehicle and hook it up and that's it.

"And now what we do is you just park your car your vehicle over night and in the period of about six to eight hours you'll have a tank of fuel for your vehicle's travels tomorrow."

Comm: "Sounds great. What does it mean?"

Leo Varlese, Stuart Energy: "Well right now the we can go about 60 or 70 miles on the charge from this in an evening.

"We figure it would be somewhere around $7, $7US to fill up your hydrogen fuelcell vehicle for a day's travel back and forth to the office."

Comm: "But beneath the glossy sales patter there's serious tension between the state of California and the car companies over regulation. California is insisting the major car companies produce 10% of their cars with low emissions by 2003 - or they don't sell any cars in this state. It's too tall an order for most of the auto companies. Only Ford has accepted the challenge. The rest are balking. "

Dr. Alan Lloyd, Chairman, Ca. Air Resources Board: "We had two hearings revisiting the zero emission vehicle mandate and except where Ford actually said they could meet our requirements the automobile industry were universally opposed to our requirements there."

Dr. Ferdinand Panik, Pres. Ca. Fuel cell Partnership & Head of Research, Daimler Chrysler: "Ford you see are more optimistic than we are. Ford has assumed that there is a big already a big market and so they're saying they are can fulfil it but in the end, we'll see."

Dr. Alan Lloyd, Chairman, Ca. Air Resources Board: "In the last round of the review of the mandate the board added some additional flexibility in terms of different types of technology you could put in there, different fuel you could utilise but at sometime we felt it was very important to keep that pressure on the auto companies."

Dr. Ferdinand Panik, Pres. Ca. Fuel cell Partnership & Head of Research, Daimler Chrysler: "It's not the best way of forcing something with the legislation is the better way of doing something in partnership finding out because we are of course interested in creating a world of mobility that is not harming the environment of course we are."

Dr. Alan Lloyd, Chairman, Ca. Air Resources Board: "I think maybe it's fashionable these days to say that governments should be working with the industry let the industry work co-operatively. The history we've had at the Air Resources Board is that you also need some of the stick so just using the carrot has not been as successful. Using the stick has been most successful."

Comm: "Both big auto and big government are using this partnership and other forums like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to resolve the conflict..."

Dr. Ferdinand Panik, Pres. Ca. Fuel cell Partnership & Head of Research, Daimler Chrysler: "The World Business Council is very much strategic oriented. It's similar which we are doing here trying to share experience if there's something that we are feeling becomes important let's sit together and find the way how to do it."

Alan Lloyd, Chair, Ca. Air Resources Board: "A lot of the issues, while technical and political, you can build a lot of inter-personal relationships on behalf of the partnership which I think is going to be very important as we move ahead."

Comm: "So it's here in California that we may see the beginning of the end of the age of oil. For Alan Lloyd this change is imperative."

Alan Lloyd, Chair, Ca. Air Resources Board: "We're looking at a technology in fuel cells which we hope is the way that we can replace the internal combustion engine which is going needed to address the local, regional and global pollution from climate change right through to some of the health impacts of the diesel engine and gasoline engine etc."

Comm: "This is is the competition. BMW's hydrogen car. It doesn't have an expensive fuelcell engine. Instead, it burns hydrogen in a normal car engine.

"BMW are taking it on a world tour. Here they're trying to market their hydrogen fuelled car in the oil rich Middle East - must be like trying to sell republicanism to royalty.

"BMW also wanted to be a part of the Californian Fuel Cell Partnership. They claim it should have been called the Californian Hydrogen Car Partnership. But they were kept out by their rivals. The reason? Their car is not powered by a fuel cell but by a standard internal combustion engine."

Detlef Frank, Senior V.P Science & Traffic Policy, BMW Gp: "We regret that it is not the hydrogen partnership because we wanted to join them but there are some competitors who are pushed in the direction that only fuel cell driven cars should be allowed. But we're closely working together with the Air resources board and the director, Dr Alan Lloyd, likes to see us as, lets say, outside competitors to the fuel cell partnership."

Comm: "BMW's hydrogen-powered car works both on petrol and on hydrogen. It's a strategy that might satisfy the Californian emission standards. That way BMW doesn't have to develop a fuel cell car."

Detlef Frank, V.P., BMW: "At least for the time being fuel cell is not ready to go as it is the internal combustion engine. If you have time to wait for another 30 years or so it may be possible to have to use the fuel cell."

Dr. Ferdinand Panik, Pres. Ca. Fuel cell Partnership & Head of Research, Daimler Chrysler: "The problem was big difference between internal combustion engine and fuel cell in this area with hydrogen is that the fuel cell can run up to 50 % efficiency and the internal combustion engine with hydrogen is running perhaps with 20 %.

"And if you have an engine that is not a good efficiency then the concept is lost because the range is too low then yeah.

"That was a lesson which we learnt round about 25 years ago others which not have to learn this lesson will learn it. (laughs).

Comm: "BMW's solution to reduced range is to increase it using liquid, rather than gaseous hydrogen. This concentrates the fuel. The down side? The fuel is more expensive and you need different gas stations."

Detlef Frank, V.P., BMW: "The people, consumers who pay a lot of money for cars are very reluctant if new systems do not offer the same level of comfort power and so on and I think we are ahead with the internal combustion engine as compared with the fuel cells."

Comm: "Whichever engine is used to power hydrogen cars, both big auto and big oil are united on one crucial issue: there will be no quick switch from oil to hydrogen."

Detlef Frank, V.P., BMW: "The contact between government, environmentalists and the manufacturers are not close enough to understand each other. Because sometimes environmentalist they always require a new thing, here right now at no extra expense and so on."

Comm: "For big oil - in the shape of BP's Sir John Browne - the shift to using hydrogen is a very long way off."

Sir John Browne, Chairman, BP: "However we look at energy a large bulk of it will come from hydrocarbons for the foreseeable future. So often there are conversations which say we must sought out things immediately actually that's not right. It can't be done, its impractical, dislocation is too big for the world, but its surprising what can be done step by step."

Comm: "However distant a hydrogen world seems to the oil producers, it's a much closer reality for Iceland. Remember they've already got much more renewable energy than they need to transform their entire economy to hydrogen."

Jón Björn Skúlason,Manager, Icelandic New Energy: "Step one is to create the infrastructure for a hydrogen bus project we have already signed the contracts with all the companies and ten partners to do a bus demonstration. Then the infrastructure we will start building that later this year which will be prepared and fully operational by September 2002. And then buses will arrive shortly after that which will go onto normal operations in Iceland and we foresee that as the key learning period.

"Simultaneously we are doing small market assistant for portable fuel cells. Small fuel cells smaller than 1 kilowatt. So that the normal public get used by using hydrogen in their normal daily life."

Comm: "It may help that Icelanders are gadget freaks, eager to use any new convenient device on the market. The head of Shell in Iceland is already test-marketing portable hydrogen fuel-cell devices that generate electricity."

Friörik Stefánsson, Director Industrial Marketing, Shell, Iceland: "You have a small hydrogen bottle and this little bottle we have 76 litres of hydrogen. We plug in the cord for the electricity coming out and the connecting hose to the hydrogen bottle and you connect the hydrogen bottle and you turn it on and you have hydrogen flowing into the cell and its operating right away and right away you have electricity and you have light."

Comm: "These portable power packs, some of them tiny, can run anything from vacuum cleaners to mobile phones."

Jón Björn Skúlason, Manager, Icelandic New Energy: "We can say then that step two is an introduction of fuel cell private vehicles, passenger vehicles. We hope that we can demonstrate cars in 2003 latest 2004."

"Step three would then be a ship project, that is to power a fishing vessel by fuel cell because for example in Iceland ships emit as much green house gases as the whole of the transport sector."

Comm: "And step 4? Well these latter-day Vikings are thinking of selling their so-called 'green' hydrogen, made from renewable energy, to Europe.

"It appears that Professor Arnason's dream is becoming a reality."

Prof. Bragi Árnason: "I was almost sure from the beginning that the hydrogen energy would come. Somehow it was just a question of when? But in the long term we do not have much choice."