I Agree
There is, most likely, no research being done in applying fuel cells to boats because of the high costs involved and the boating industry is too fragmented for a joint effort. In automobiles, there are three or four main players with large research budgets and federal pollution and mileage mandates to meet. Even just in boat engines, there are many players and why would they want to develop something that would require almost no spare parts to replace their products? The boat manufacturers will most likely adapt the automobile version to nautical use sometime after the auto versions are on the road. They sure do seem attractive, though. They now have one that doesn't have to have stored hydrogen. It uses a readily available liquid hydrocarbon fuel in order to extract the hydrogen. I believe that fuel cells will be used in boats in the future, but we might not see them in our life time. Just look how long it took jet turbins to be used and only very limited at that. I would also not be surprised if one or more of the big diesel manufacturers bought the technology and buried it. I have personally seen such things happen before with other technologies.
