WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- It would be so easy to disparage the BMW Hydrogen 7, the world's first production-ready hydrogen car and a guaranteed showstopper when it's unveiled next month at the Los Angeles Motor Show.

After all, BMW plans to build only 100 of these vehicles next year. Of those, a mere 25 are headed to the U.S. Even then, only "ideal ambassadors" will be allowed to drive them, a BMW spokesman told CNNMoney last month. And those lucky few might have to pay a monthly fee for the privilege.

In other words, if you live in an area without hydrogen fueling stations - which, by the way, happens to be most of America - you're out of luck.

But let's look beyond these shortcomings. What's important about the Hydrogen 7 isn't how fast it's being rolled out or who gets to drive it. It's what's under the hood that matters.

The problem with fuel-cell cars

Think of this car as a hydro-hybrid: It has two separate fuel tanks - one for hydrogen and the other for regular gasoline. The Hydrogen 7 can switch between the two at the press of a button. This means you can help the planet and America's energy independence whenever you're near a hydrogen fueling station, and fill 'er up at the gas pump the rest of the time.

This is a brilliant move by BMW. Hydrogen may well be the fuel to bet on in the long term. It is the most abundant and, all other factors being equal, the cheapest. Gas, ethanol, coal and organic waste can all be converted into hydrogen. Water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen, if you have enough cheap electricity to do it (and experts say we can get that cheap electricity from geothermal plants).

Until recently, however, BMW shied away from the hydro-hybrid approach, spending its energies on the idea of making a hydrogen fuel-cell car instead. We've been hearing about this pie-in-the-sky prototype for a decade now. Indeed, every automaker seems to have fuel-cell concept vehicle to show off, like the F-Cell from DaimlerChrysler, the Chevrolet Sequel, the Ford Focus FCV, and the Volkswagen Touran Hy-Motion.

In a bid to steal BMW's thunder, General Motors trumpeted, two days after the Hydrogen 7 was announced, its own plans to unveil a line of fuel-cell vehicles - the Hy-Wire and the HydroGen3 - by 2011.

Here's the big problem with fuel-cell cars: They're all or nothing. You need a massive infrastructure of hydrogen-fueling stations for drivers to happily tool along with a clean conscience. If that support isn't there, they can't.