 Honda FCX Clarity. Click image to enlarge |
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Honda FCX Clarity
Vancouver, British Columbia – Unveiled in November, 2007 at the Los Angeles Auto show, the production version of the Honda FCX Clarity fuel cell car – yes, the production version – is now being leased to a limited number of “early adopters” in southern California – including some movie stars such as Jamie Lee Curtis – on a three-year lease for US$600 a month. Honda plans to have about 200 FCX Claritys on the road in the U.S. and Japan by 2011.
The Honda FCX Clarity is a (U.S.) street legal, zero-emissions, fuel cell-powered mid-size sedan that meets all current North American safety standards and performs much like a standard four-cylinder gasoline-engined car, according to Honda. One was recently driven from southern California to Vancouver as part of the Hydrogen Road Tour 2009, a promotional rally sponsored by various government and corporate entities interested in the promotion of hydrogen as an automotive fuel – you can read CanadianDriver’s coverage here. I was one of a group of eager journalists to get a brief test drive in the FCX Clarity last week.
 Honda FCX Clarity. Click image to enlarge |
Unlike most other fuel cell vehicles now being tested in small fleets, the FCX Clarity doesn’t make use of an existing vehicle bodystyle that is converted to a fuel cell vehicle. The FCX Clarity is a clean-sheet design engineered and designed around its fuel cell drive components. As a result, Honda was able to package the components in a way that permitted a roomy four-passenger interior, a spacious trunk, and an eye-catching aerodynamic exterior design.
Under that stylish exterior, the FCX Clarity’s fuel cell components include a high pressure (5000 psi) hydrogen tank behind the rear seat; a third-generation Honda fuel cell stack in the console between the driver and front passenger that generates a maximum 100 kilowatts of electricity; a 288-volt lithium-ion battery under the rear seat to store the electricity; a combined 100-kW electric drive motor/coaxial gearbox/power drive unit in the engine bay that propels the car with the equivalent of 134 horsepower and 189 ft-lbs of torque.
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at 7:30 am
The quality of the car doesn’t change the basic issues with using hydrogen as an energy carrier. It just isn’t very good at that job.
From windmill to wheels a Battery Electric Car will be about 3 times as efficient in using that energy due to energy losses extracting H2/compressing H2/turning H2 back into electricity. We are looking about 25% efficiency for H2 cycle vs 75% for EV cycle.
Not to mention you need a continent wide Hydrogen infrastructure of H2 filling stations, where most people can simply charge up their EV at home.
Not to mention that H2 Fuel cells still cost well over $100000.
Take this car rip out the H2 fuel cell and drop in a nice big battery and you instantly have one superb EV.
As it is you have an interesting research project that will likely never see the light of day.
at 8:14 am
@Peter
Care to provide any references for your claims?
at 8:17 am
@Peter
You seem to be forgetting (conveniently) that batteries come from somewhere and often involve a great deal of CO2 in their production.
at 8:19 am
No doubt the FCX is years from being a mainstream car. It is refreshing to read about a car maker that has taken great effort, despite tremendous obstacles, to lease out a few FCX cars for the public to use and experience. Kudos for Honda.
at 9:04 am
Ya but how many cupholders does it have??
at 9:10 am
just kidding, this is an awesome accomplishment!
at 10:42 am
These kinds of fuel cell cars like fcx are in the wrong way totally.
First is the safe issue. H2 storage and transportation is hard and dangerous. It’s also much more dangerous than gas if the car is in traffic accident.
Second is the cost issue. A fuel cell car still need a big battery to run. Why do we waste our money on the H2 cell? And the Hydrogen infrastructure of H2 filling stations is another huge waste.
There are also some other issues of fuel cell car like the fuel cell is hard to start at below 0 degree, because of the waste-water in fuel cell is turning to ice.
So the electric cars will win the battle with fuel cell cars.
at 10:43 am
peter –
EV’s that are currently out and to be released takes hours for a full charge (RAV4 EV- 5hrs, Tesla – 3hrs, Volt – unofficial charge time is also 3hrs).
Where the hydrogen honda can fuel up just like conventional petro fuel vehicle. By having this concept, it involves less change in ones lifestyle and i personally thing, easier to adapt.
As for the cost, it will cost money to convert any fuel station to fuel cell or EV. They both have there ups and downs..
at 12:20 pm
@Cameron.
Both these links have visuals showing where the energy is lost. You can search around for the most up to date number at each stage, but the result will still be fairly close to the H2 vehicle using three times as much energy as an EV.
http://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/f12/honda-fcx-clarity-unveiled-la-15966/index2.html
http://electricnick.com/2009/03/can-hydrogen-fuel-tomorrows-electric-cars/
@oldsnail:
Do you really value trips to the gas station? Is it worth spending 3 times as much energy and uncounted billions to build a Hydrogen infrastructure. So you can go to an H2 filling station 20 years from now?
If all the new EVs would require 1 more coal fired generator, using H2 cars instead would 3 coal fired generators. Energy isn’t free and using 3x as much is a waste.
With an EV you simply pull into your garage and plug the car in. No multi-billion dollar infrastructure required.
EVs won’t cover all needs, but a significant portion could switch easily and dramatically reduce fossil fuel usage.
And with cars like the GM Volt you need not worry about running out of range as you have a built in range extender. A $40K Volt will deliver EV benefits and be availble in 2010.
H2 cars remain a pipe dream that use triple the energy and require mass infrastructure investment.
at 3:02 am
Time to do a little myth busting relative to hydrogen vs. gasoline.
Take one cubic meter of gasoline vapour (it’s the vapour that burns) vs. one cubic meter of hydrogen vapour, each at the perfect fuel-to-air blend (worst case scenario) – blow them up. Gasoline results in 44 gram-equivalents of TNT, whereas hydrogen has only 2 gram-equivalents. So, the stuff in the back of your car, today, has 22 times the destructive power of a hydrogen equivalent.
Add to this the reality that gasoline is a liquid fuel and when spilled will flow across the ground (and into waterways, sewers, etc.) and will then evaporate (become a gas) over many hours with the explosive heavier-than-air vapours finding low spots to collect in.
Hydrogen, in fuel cell and other vehicles, is already a gas, and is 14 times lighter than air! Once released it very quickly disipates thus eliminating any fire/explosion risk very quickly.(without polluting the environment, too!),
at 2:34 pm
Hydrogen has to come from somewhere: it doesn’t exist by itself in this galaxy. So either it’s made from natural gas or it’s made from pure water and electricity. The Law of Conservation of Energy says that the same amount of electric power (minus conversion losses) is in the hydrogen generated. Peter is right: hydrogen cannot compete with its own source of energy!
at 10:44 am
I said to bypass this stupid hydrogen gas station problem and install a tank of water with a water electrolizer into the water tank for unlimited hydrogen production into the car while driving without fuel cost nor pollution. Honda by selling this stupid hydrogen gas station problem to their paying customers is just a heavy depressed car compagny. Millions and millions of gallon of petrol is burned for nothing and honda is not offering any alternatives to their customers so they gonna ends like gm, bankrupcy because lack of paying consumers. Don’t buy any cars or light trucks from any car compagny that don’t conceive, build and distribute zero-pollution and zero fuel cost cars. The hydrogen is already in water… every drop of gasoline ever sold was in vain except burn the air and give money to richs. Stop any car expenditure toward these retarded and depressed car manufacturers, they are dinosaurus that eat and burn the air, soil and pollute the lakes and river and even the sea.
at 12:42 pm
It takes energy to separate hydrogen from water. More energy than is contained in the hydrogen released from that water. I’m not sure what kind of magical universe you come from, baba, but your tank of water idea would get you all of 50 feet before you ran out of energy.
at 7:22 am
“Hydrogen has to come from somewhere: it doesn’t exist by itself in this galaxy”
erm… it is the most common thing in the galaxy by mass and exists in stars often in a monatomic (rather than it’s natural diatomic) state.
It doesn’t exist on this planet so i agree with your point and certainly is a fairly inefficient thing to use as a fuel compared to electricity.
at 3:34 am
@In the know
You may be right about hydrogen being less destructive than gasoline (I’m too lazy to look up the figures) but it is irrelevant.
Everybody really should know that hydrogen doesn’t explode, it burns! Does the Hindenburg ring any bells? Not only does it burn, but it burns invisibly! No pretty flames to tell people you’re on fire, just a little bit of heat distortion and a lot of screaming.