I HAVE seen the future of motoring and it sounds like a hairdryer and leaves a trail of steam like a kettle on boil. Actually, to be completely accurate, I have also smelled the future and there is no odour, no fumes and no poisons no matter how close your nostrils get to the exhaust pipe of the General Motors Hy-wire.

To say that the answer to the pollution problems caused by the car is staring us in the face is not entirely correct for we cannot see the fuel of the future. But hydrogen, as abundant as the air we breathe and the water we drink, might just be the solution to ridding us once and for all of choking streets and cities cloaked in smog.

The proof of the potential of hydrogen was in the narrow streets of Monaco this week where I dodged scooters and Ferraris in equal measure. While the scooters puttered and the Ferraris growled, I simply whined quietly as the electric motor spun to propel me around the famous harbour and up its steep hills.

The exhilaration, though, came from knowing that I was not leaving behind a jetstream of poisons. Hydrogen, extracted from water, is taken from the tank and pumped into a fuel cell where it reacts with the platinum coating on a stack of 200 sheets to send a charge to drive an electric motor. The only waste product from the fully-recyclable fuel cell is H20 — water.

General Motors has put its fuel cell technology into a working vehicle, a conventional Vauxhall Zafira people-mover, as a test bed and discovered it will offer a range of about 250 miles from its hydrogen tanks and speeds up to 100mph. Acceleration is almost as good as a petrol or diesel alternative and there is no lack of torque, which means that even steep gradients are not a forbidding challenge.

But the most impressive demonstration of what a car could look and feel like within a decade is the Hy-wire, for in that concept car General Motors has explored the technological limits. Steering, throttle and brakes are, like all the car’s systems, controlled electronically and not through conventional mechanical linkages. Such “fly by wire” technology has existed in aircraft for some time but its acceptance in cars is taking longer. Designers have also been released by not having the constraints of putting an engine up front under a bonnet; instead, the versatility of the fuel cell means it can be packaged under the floor, freeing acres of space and signalling what we might expect from car cabins soon.

The drawbacks of hydrogen power at this early stage are obvious from the size of the power pack, which weighs 100kg more than a diesel engine, and the cost, which would be ten times more than a conventional engine today. But hydrogen power is in its infancy compared with a century of tweaking of petrol and diesel engines and, even after 100 years, there are plenty of faults with both of those. Toyota and Honda have had enough confidence in hydrogen to launch models this week in the United States and Japan, but the chances of them becoming commercially viable immediately are as good as the cat in hell and it will take 20 years to gain full commercial acceptance. For example, there is nowhere to recharge a hydrogen car and little prospect of filling stations getting hydrogen nozzles soon, while the cost is a huge restriction, with Toyota’s leasing charges estimated at up to £6,400 a month.

General Motors is taking the more conservative route, preferring to use Hy-wire to persuade the world’s motoring population gently that hydrogen is the future. The wall of scepticism and fear is likely to be high, though. Motorists are not by nature creatures of change and suggesting that we bin a century of proven technology for fuel tanks full of an element whose most infamous use, in the lexicons of most people, was in a giant bomb is not going to gain ready acceptance.

The sceptics should not worry because hydrogen is safe, particularly compared with the ten gallons of explosive they usually carry in metal tanks under the boot of their family hatchbacks today.

There has never been a better time for change. In the 21st century of space travel and supersonic flights, of face transplants and genetic engineering, we are still running around in metal boxes using a technology that Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz first pioneered in their workshops in the 19th century. For all the fancy packaging of a modern motor car, Henry Ford — if he could make an arrangement for a day pass from motoring heaven — could lift the bonnet and still recognise the basic arrangement of engine, gasoline and exhaust pipe on a metal frame.

The internal combustion engine might have revolutionised our lives but the cost has been borne by generations who have breathed the toxic and unpleasant fumes of diesel and petrol while tonnes of carbon dioxide have floated upwards and, for all we know, super-heated the skies into a giant electric blanket that has suffocated our weather systems.

The ideal is to generate hydrogen from renewable sources, such as wind power, but even using coal or gas powered stations, total emissions could be cut by half immediately.

With hydrogen, we are being offered a Utopia of clean air; we simply have to ditch fossil fuels and turn to nothing more harmful than an exhaust pipe full of steam.