Hydrogen Powers Meeting

It wasn’t exactly what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described in his ambitious plan for “Hydrogen Highways,” but it was a start: the mayor of Santa Ana taking a small, hydrogen-propelled John Deere truck for a spin in a parking lot.

Both truck and mayor were part of a gathering Tuesday to address ways of bringing “green” energy to Orange County. In the Santa Ana lot, county officials and local business owners addressed new initiatives.

But the star attraction was the grass-green truck with bright yellow seats and a 20-kilowatt fuel cell stack.

Participants hunched over the truck like it was a souped-up muscle car from their youth.

And like a proud owner, Bruce Wood of John Deere bragged about its features: four-wheel drive, a top speed of 35 mph, an electric engine running on hydrogen fuel and a power strip with enough juice to supply four or five houses.

“It handles great,” said Mayor Miguel A. Pulido after a lap around the lot.

He talked about buying one for the city, but according to Wood, the truck is the only one of its kind for now. “It will be four or five years before we make it a commercial vehicle,” he said.

But officials at the meeting said other hydrogen vehicles may soon be tooling around the county. That’s because Santa Ana is one of five Southland cities to receive a hydrogen fuel station and five hydrogen-powered cars in the next 12 months.

“The program is supposed to show the commercial potential for hydrogen engines,” said Naveen Berry, program supervisor for South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The city plans to put the station on Daisy Street near the city corporation yards. Next month, the air quality board will vote on a contract to install hydrogen engines in 35 Toyota Prius cars, which will go to cities and other agencies.

At the gathering, an Irvine firm described its plan for garbage trucks that run on natural gas from landfills. “So you’d have landfills producing fuel for vehicles that will pick up more garbage to produce more fuel,” said Steve Wilburn, president of FirmGreen Energy.

Hydrogen highways may be years away, but judging from the response he got Tuesday, Wood said that when the newfangled cars finally come out, people will be ready.