"You're going to see a lot of prototype vehicles coming out in the next couple years, but you wouldn't see any commercial vehicles coming out until 2002 to 2004," Mitchell said.

But Maru is less optimistic.

"Vehicles with fuel cells are still years away," he said. "Hopefully they will be utilized in buses five years from now, and in passenger vehicles, maybe, in 2010."

"Most people are talking in the vicinity of 2008 to 2010," Lee said. "We have a lot of technologies that work, they just cost too much."

Robert Walker, former chair of the House Science Committee and president of the Wexler Group--a Washington based lobbyist firm--said that fuel cells have a bright future, but are marred by high costs today.

"It's been some time coming, and I think there are some hopeful trends," he said. "The problem with fuel cells has always been that they're very expensive to build and expensive to maintain.

Lee agreed, noting that very few people will be willing to purchase a car based out of sympathy for the environment.

"Some people will do it just because they want to be trendy or environmentally greener, but more people won't," Lee said.

"In the end, you've got to be competitive," Lee said, noting the current low prices of gasoline. "It's going to be hard to compete with gasoline at these prices."

The Greatest Thing Since Unleaded Gas?

But the debate continues as to whether there will be tangible environmental results if millions buy into the fuel cell revolution.

"One of the promises of fuel cells is that you will cut global [carbon dioxide] emissions and global warming, but there's a two step process to getting to that," Mitchell said. "In order to get fuel cells out there, you need to let them run on fuels we use today."

"Once there is a critical mass of fuel cells out there, people will begin to address [those issues]," he added.

Mitchell said the new reformer would provide a comfortable transition to renewable fuels, but emphasized that a near-term solution would have to use fossil fuels.

"In North America, we've done some pretty extensive analysis that says, if you want to replace 10 percent of the fueling infrastructure with methanol, the cost for that will be $60 billion," Mitchell said. "That's the kind of level you're going to need from day one. If you ask somebody to sign up for that, there's a good possibility that nobody would."