Fuel Cell Hype Back Again

from the and-it'll-disappear-again-as-well dept

Every few years the press gets excited about the potential for fuel cell-powered laptops. And then the concept goes away. We wrote about in 2003, explaining why it wasn't a big deal, and again in 2005. So here we are in 2008 and, once again, we're hearing stories about new fuel cells for laptops that are going to be demoed (not, of course, actually put into production). The benefits of a fuel cell-powered laptop are that on a single cell, a laptop can last a lot longer (usually the estimate is about 10 hours). That sure beats the 3 to 5 hours most laptops get on traditional lithium-ion batteries today.

But... there's a huge problem with fuel cells that almost never gets discussed in the press: you need to keep buying replacements and then you need to carry those replacement fuel cell cartridges with you. It's like back to the bad old days when your consumer electronics products all had non-rechargeable, disposable batteries. It was a huge pain. That's why everyone switched to rechargeable batteries. When you switch to disposable fuel cells, then you're adding an ongoing expense (much greater than electricity) and forcing users to keep carrying around spares. Yes, for some folks that ability to go for a longer time without plugging in will be worth it -- but for plenty of people it seems like the "cost" is a lot worse than the benefit.

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