The prospect of a truly commercial, and likely profitable venture to obtain enough capital and sponsorships to design, build, and operate a hydrogen powered bus or motor coach seems likely to be realized soon. We’re not talking about those recent, somewhat successful wholly or partially government and/or research funded hydrogen bus projects. We’ll leave you to do the Internet searching on terms like “hydrogen powered bus” to see what we’re talking about. London, England and Iceland, and even Southern California in the good old USA, have had notable public transportation projects with hydrogen powered buses. But, are any of the hydrogen bus designers, manufacturers, lease/sales agents, and bus system operators really making good profits as companies? Perhaps, some of them are. We believe there’s an excellent opportunity for profits to be made in the high-end private custom motor coach conversion marketplace for hydrogen powered buses.

We don’t see a lot of evidence that hydrogen powered vehicles of any kind are really in the mainstream consumer marketplace. Sure, hybrid cars are available enough if you can deal with potential backlogs, and hybrid cars are even in the middle class affordability range. True hydrogen power for vehicles though, can barely be described as out of the lab. More will be needed to further mainstream hydrogen powered cars and, yes, buses too. We all know Mother Earth needs us to get our act together with hydrogen power. Her unhappy environmental messages to mankind seem to be getting louder each year. What we need are more profitable business endeavors to promote hydrogen powered vehicles. Here’s our take on the situation.

Recently, we had the opportunity to examine the “land yacht” business. What we mean is the manufacture and sales/leasing of custom motor coach conversions usually for road touring in an “Entertainer”, “Star”, “Crew/Band” or “Executive” style bus. Even the financial fat-cats who privately own one of these motor coaches generally don’t let it sit around back of the mansion or out in a field somewhere. Not when a significant number of these styles of motor coaches now reach over a sales price of $1million apiece after manufacture and ‘decoration’. The vast majority are handled by leasing companies as owners or agents of owners. The range of daily rates for leasing varies widely depending on a number of factors. Typically, one could expect to pay $1000-$3000 per day and the leasing companies are only interested in bids for a weekly lease as an absolute minimum. The ‘public tranportation’ grade of hydrogen buses used in the demo projects go for around $3million, so that means per day lease rates for a luxury hydrogen bus conversion should come in under $10,000 per day. That’s a bit steep, but not impossible for the types of lessors one can expect in the “land yacht” business.

What’s important about this analysis is that many of the corporate captains, top name entertainers and stars are seeking a way to demonstrate their commitment to the environment. What better way to show it than by leasing a cutting edge appropriate technology hydogen bus. It’s win-win situation. Throw some photovoltaic panels on the roof to suppliment batteries (or better yet, a portable hydrogen fuel-cell electricity generator, instead of a carbon-fuels based generator). Or perhaps, install programmable, long-lasting, eco-friendly, and energy efficient LED panels on the sides instead of custom one-time expensive bus-wraps to display your messages or announcements in a style unmatched by the bus-wrap concept. The possibilites are immense with today’s existing technology and, while expensive, well worth it for this audience. If your hear about someone or a group looking to fund this type of project, leave us a comment here. We’ll scrape together our small, but not insignificant, captital resources to invest for even a few percent of the potential returns. Like we said earlier, it’s about time for the luxury hydrogen bus.