A NEXT-GENERATION hydrogen pump is to be built at the Honda plant – and it could pave the way for the technology to be developed here in the future.

Forward Swindon, the council’s regeneration body, has received a £250,000 grant from the South West England Regional Development Agency to build the ultra-modern fuel station at car factory.

Called the Hydrogen Highway project, it is a bid to encourage Honda to research and develop new hydrogen cars in Swindon.

Because they don’t use petrol or diesel, they only produce water, not carbon dioxide and harmful chemicals.

Bill Cotton, Forward Swindon’s director of economic development, said: “The key is to look at hydrogen fuel cell technology.

“Honda are one of the few companies in the world to have produced a hydrogen fuel cell car.

“There’s only a handful of the cars at the moment. They’re very expensive.

“We want to encourage them to bring them to the UK and develop the technology over here.

“It’s a hydrogen refuelling station; like a petrol pump for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

“At the moment these cars are very rare and kind of experimental. Part of this project is to encourage new take-up of these vehicles.

“It’s a really small investment for a long-term hope that we can get a bit of edge developing these type of products in Swindon.

“It does open the door for more local companies and the likes of Honda to be able to test these vehicles and develop new vehicles. It’s a research-and-development project more than a mass-market type of thing.”

Mr Cotton is talking to bus companies in Swindon about whether they are interested in running vehicles on hydrogen.

A Honda spokesman said: “The plan is to create Hydrogen Highway, a number of refuelling sites in the south west, and we’re planning on installing a hydrogen refuelling station in the Honda site at South Marston.”

But there are no plans to manufacture the cars in Swindon – at the moment, they are all built in Japan.

There are already a small handful of such sites in the UK, he said.

He said the site would be ready by late summer and added: “We’ve got to sow the seeds of the future.

“We hope by putting it in Swindon it will encourage more people to think about using hydrogen.”