Background: Hi, James....Just like Tiger, right?...Ready? Ok.
Professor Giorgio Rizzoni: CAR has been involved in hydrogen and fuel cell research since the late 1990s. The inauguration of the refueling station was, in a sense, the culmination of many years of work. But since then, many new developments have taken place. For example, Professor Guezennec and his students have developed a hydrogen fuel cell powered golf cart. They're in the process of developing, also, a plug-in hybrid vehicle that will also function on hydrogen fuel cells, as well as on electricity from the power grid.
Professor Yann Guezennec to student: ...the only thing that will be showing is the gas tank -- the hydrogen tank.
Guezennec: Participation of students at all levels, regardless of their capacity, in an exciting project like this I think is a very interesting way of getting people excited about technology, and therefore, eventually, for those people to have an impact in the world we're in.
Student Nadia Anguiano: Joining CAR was a very interesting experience for me because there's so many things that go on here, and so many different people. And also, a lot of them are very experimental -- something that I had never done. And that's actually what I'm doing now. So it was a really nice progression for me because I wasn't just dumped in, kind of like, a big graduate research project. I started as an undergrad, and I kind of got to know everybody.
Guezennec: Hydrogen is not, today, available at the pump. So, it's a chicken and egg. You can develop the transportation technology, but at the same time, if you cannot refuel that transportation technology, those vehicles, you don't have the solution. So, what we were seeing here, with the unveiling of the first hydrogen refueling station, this provides us, essentially, an entry point into something we could not touch before. It's to effectively enable our participation into hydrogen vehicle program in partnership with major OEMs, or the Army, or Battelle.
Guezennec to Rizzoni: You have to go on record talking about the first hydrogen par four. Rizzoni: Yeah, all went well. The first hole of the hydrogen economy recorded a par score. (Laughter)
Background: That's good...
Rizzoni: So that's a very, very important advancement...you know, "A giant leap for mankind..." Is that how it went?
