Danielle Smith has embraced the electric vehicle. No, not the EV you're thinking of

Danielle Smith believes in a bright future for zero-emission vehicles, of the sort that virtually no one uses in Alberta today.

Remember in the middle of Alberta's Hot Donair Summer, when the premier walked hand in hand with somebody in a buzzworthy government surplus costume through a food festival?

She proudly commuted to Taste of Edmonton in a hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle.

"They're pretty zippy. They work pretty well," Smith would say later. 

Not only is she confident that Alberta will embrace the hydrogen car, she also told her Your Province, Your Premier call-in show audience that she wants the next vehicle she purchases to be one, too. 

Sure, there are nearly 9,000 electric vehicles on Alberta roads, and hundreds of charging stations. Ahead of Ottawa's 2035 ban on selling new petroleum-powered vehicles, Smith wants a different ride to net zero.

"I think our solution for zero-emission vehicles is hydrogen — and they're already here," she said on the radio.

Smith has embedded this enthusiasm into government action, mandating her Service Alberta minister to pursue a network of hydrogen fuelling stations across the province, up from the zero publicly available now. The province is commissioning an analysis into the potential conversion of all or part of the government's 3,400-vehicle fleet to hydrogen — from sheriffs' cruisers to Alberta Forestry and Parks ranger trucks.

Alberta might even try woo Toyota or Hyundai "to come to our province to build a car manufacturing plant," said Smith, premier of a province thousands of kilometres from anything even faintly resembling an auto industry.

Smith isn't alone. Many climate-conscious advocates, business leaders and government officials believe hydrogen-powered fuel cells can help decarbonize the transportation sector, alongside plug-in battery electric vehicles. (Jonathan Wilkinson, the federal natural resources minister, owns one.)

Alberta's premier and team differ not only in their degree of faith that hydrogen cars are the solution, but also how they combine that with an abiding skepticism about electric vehicles, the prevailing climate-friendly car technology in North America and most of the world. Although plug-in vehicles have more than doubled in popularity in two years and now make up more than 10 per cent of Canadian new vehicle registrations, Smith doesn't think they'll be a fit for Alberta.

Is there something more behind this than one heck of a smooth drive to an Edmonton food fair? She is, after all, the leader of a province with massive natural gas reserves and a developing industrial sector that extracts hydrogen from natural gas (with carbon capture mitigating emissions).

This doesn't come up, however, when she protests that electric vehicles will overtax the electrical grid and won't operate well in Alberta's cold-weather climate or in remote areas. In fact, she has another anecdote to bolster those opinions.

She drove a plug-in hybrid vehicle during last summer's UCP leadership race, Smith said in a July episode of her radio program. "I found that the charging stations were sparse, they didn't work half the time, they weren't in the right place, it took hours to be able to get a charge. That's not going to work in our environment."