The year was 1966, and General Motors was working on the future. From January to October, some 200 people worked in three shifts on the Electrovan, the first electric vehicle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It had room for two, weighed 7,100 pounds, and could hit 60 mph in a not-quite-compelling 30 seconds.

But it was the first of its kind, a new way of doing things. Hydrogen-powered cars can be refueled in just a few minutes, are just as capable as their gas-loving counterparts, and emit nothing but water as a byproduct.

Today, GM heralded the Electrovan's 50th birthday, noting it has since spent $2.5 billion developing fuel cell technology.

Rad, right? Yup, until you realize that for all that time and money, the automaker has made effectively zero progress getting humanity to ditch fossil fuels for hydrogen.

Plenty of folks are still pursuing this dream. Honda's offering the Clarity Fuel Cell sedan in Japan. Toyota's Mirai is available in the US, starting at nearly $60,000. Chevy just made a hydrogen-powered pickup for the US Army.

But no one's solved the fundamental problems with hydrogen power: There's no real infrastructure to get the fuel around the country and into cars. And while hydrogen's the most abundant element in the universe, making it into a useable fuel often involves natural gas—hardly a zero-emissions process.

So yeah, GM marking 50 years of working on the stuff is like a a PhD celebrating his tenth year working on that thesis—and insisting he'll be done real soon.