Hydrogen Car Buyers Out of Their Element?

So, where do you fill up a $150,000 hydrogen-fueled sports car?

The question is relevant starting today, when the two-seat Hydrogen Shelby Cobra -- built by auto legend Carroll Shelby -- can be ordered from Hydrogen Car Co., a 9-month-old Los Angeles company.

The Cobra’s internal combustion V-8 engine burns hydrogen, making it cleaner and more fuel- efficient than any of its gasoline-gulping Shelby siblings. The difficulty with answering the question is that hydrogen filling stations are hardly on every corner.

In California, there are just 13 of them. Operating one requires special training and attention to safety concerns. Only three stations in Southern California are open to the public: one in Diamond Bar and two in the Coachella Valley. A fourth, under construction at Los Angeles International Airport, is expected to open in the fall.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to see hydrogen stations at 20-mile intervals along California’s major freeways by 2010, although there’s no money behind his dream. There’s a federal program aimed at opening at least 24 hydrogen stations in the state, but nobody in Washington has set a date for construction to start.

That makes for slim pickings if you want to take the Cobra for a long drive.

It packs the equivalent of 4 gallons of gas in its special pressurized fuel tank. Even though it can get upward of 25 miles to the gallon, it can travel only about 100 miles before needing a fill-up.

That’s not too steep a price to pay, says Hydrogen Car’s chairman, S. David Freeman. If enough hydrogen cars are sold to powerful people, perhaps political pressure for hydrogen fueling stations will grow, he said.

Freeman, 78, who once ran the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and helped start Hydrogen Car, said the first Shelbys could be delivered in six months. He said one of the company’s missions was to speed the much-hyped anti-gasoline revolution by getting hydrogen-powered cars on streets now, instead of waiting for fuel-cell-powered electric vehicles to be perfected.

Prices for the Shelby cars will vary from $149,000 to $175,000 for a top-of-the-line model rated at 400 horsepower.

“Carroll has assured us that there are people out there who will buy any car he makes, even if it runs on hot air,” Freeman said.

Shelby, 81, is an automotive icon. His 1960s-era Shelby Mustangs were classic muscle cars that are now treasured collection pieces. (He’s building the classic Cobra again at Shelby Automobiles in Las Vegas. The cars sell for $80,000 on up.)

The Hydrogen Shelby Cobra deal Freeman and partners Ari Swiller and Cole Frates signed with Shelby calls for him to convert standard Cobra engines from gas to hydrogen power. The cars will be assembled at Shelby’s engine plant in Gardena.

“If we can start hydrogen off with the most exciting cars on the road, and then move into the sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks

That is “a welcome development,” but not crucial to the future of a hydrogen-fueled transportation system, said Aaron Rachlin, manager of clean fuels for Praxair Inc., which is helping to develop the California hydrogen fueling infrastructure slowly being built with government and private funding.