Next year, a fleet of 30 DaimlerChrysler Citaro buses will go into operation in ten major European cities. Not a big deal, that ... except that all the vehicles will be powered by fuel cells.

At the same time, 60 Mercedes-Benz A-Class cars powered by fuel cell technology (above) will be deployed to DC customers in Europe, the USA, Japan and Singapore, to test the day-to-day use of the systems in the ‘real world’.

These significant milestones have been reached eight years after the launch of the first New Electric Car (NECAR 1) concept study by Daimler-Benz. Since then, some 20 concept vehicles showing different stages of progress have been produced by the company.

Other major manufacturers are also chasing the same ‘hydrogen economy’. BMW, for instance, has a number of 'Clean Energy' 7-Series cars (above) touring the world showing how the traditional internal combustion engine can operate successfully on liquified hydrogen gas.

Volkswagen has a fuel-cell Bora among a number of test vehicles, a car that has driven over one of Switzerland’s highest road passes to show its feasibility.

Honda last week delivered the first of a number of fuel cell-powered vehicles on a commercial basis to local authorities and government departments in Los Angeles and Tokyo.

General Motors began a programme in the South of France at the weekend where 200 motoring journalists from around the world are being given the opportunity to drive its Hy-Wire concept fuel cell car, debuted (above) at the recent Paris Motor Show.

It is all part of overcoming what has been described as one of the biggest challenges facing researchers and engineers in the motor industry, cutting the dependence on crude oil for motive power.

Key to the development of the fuel cell power units has been a reduction in size combined with improved performance from the systems, which use hydrogen and air to produce electric current, with the only by-product being water.

But the development of proper infrastructures to distribute the hydrogen fuel is just as essential to the low-emissions future of the ‘hydrogen economy’.

International oil giant Exxon (Esso in Ireland) is doing a lot of work with Toyota on the development of fuel cell cars, and all major oil companies are actively developing systems for the production, transport, storage and delivery of hydrogen to cars in as simple a way as petrol is currently.

The DC urban bus project rolling out next year is an ideal test ground for assessing the practicality of fuel cells as automotive powers. They’re not the first - a number of individual bus pilot schemes have been run already in Germany and Scandinavian countries.

And a year ago, DaimlerChrysler launched a cooperative venture with the Hamburg-based Hermes delivery service to test a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter with fuel cell drive in the customer’s everyday operations. After more than 16,000 kilometres, the experience gained is said to exceed the expectations of both engineers and the customer. The simple, convenient operation and dynamic start-off characteristics of electric propulsion are ideal in urban traffic and stop-and-go delivery work.

Electric vehicles using lead-acid batteries have been around a long time, notably in milk floats in many cities in the last 40 years. These systems are not practical for general motoring, being slow, costly, and not improving the overall global production of climate-changing emissions because of the energy required to create the electricity to recharge the batteries.

But the very close to general use of so-called ‘hybrid’ technologies, where internal combustion engines produce the electric power to charge batteries and drive electric motors have in their development brought much more efficient electric propulsion systems.

We will see, very quickly, the proliferation of this technology developed mainly by Toyota and Honda into other brands of cars, through cooperative development and licenced technology transfer programmes. Expect hybrid Renaults and Nissans in the foreseeable future, following an agreement with Toyota. And Ford is talking with Toyota also, on cooperative development of hybrids for use in all its brands.

We can expect a hybrid version of the Escape (Maverick over here) SUV from Ford in 2003, and later in a Volvo wagon. The Ford-owned Land Rover Freelander might also be a candidate. Honda will probably put the system into a C-RV. And a hybrid version of the Lexus RX300 SUV will be on sale on the US market next year.

SUVs are prime candidates for hybrid power because they are generally gas-guzzlers, and particularly in the US their improved fuel consumption and emissions will dramatically change for the better the overall CAFE fuel and emissions figures across a manufacturer's whole range of cars.

Hybrids are really interim, though, because they still rely on petroleum products. Fuel cells will take over from all other automotive alternative power proposals by 2005 according to a new forecast, and the market is expected to be worth $8.5 billion by 2011.

The study, Fuel Cells For Vehicles: Market Opportunities And Forecasts 2005-2011, published by Wintergreen, also says that fleet vehicle markets will evolve first, and vehicle fuel cell markets at $40.5 million in 2005 represent the beginning of commercial introduction of cars that use fuel cell systems.

In all, some 300 prototype fuel cell vehicles have been built around the world since the mid 1990s, and about 530 fuel cell systems have been used for transport including in scooters, buses and spacecraft.

But the Citaro buses from DaimlerChrysler, and the A-Class F-Cell Mercedes cars (below), going out into full passenger work next year are the first mass production vehicles to exploit the motive power of tomorrow.