Honda has started Japanese production of their spiffy-looking, highly-hyped hydrogen fuel cell-powered Clarity. And while the Clarity's a high tech halo machine destined for 200 carefully-selected customers, the same could be said of Tesla's EV Roadster. Of course, when Honda says production's begun, production's actually begun. More to the point, both companies are delighted to point-out their vehicles' zero emissions; and neither is particularly interested in discussing the full environmental impact– as in where does the power come from to charge the batteries or create liquid hydrogen? "Fuel-cell vehicles, which don't use fossil fuels and don't produce carbon dioxide, are necessary for the environment. We would like to make them more popular," Honda Chief Executive Takeo Fukui told Reuters. Methinks the media doth protest too little. "Fuel-cell vehicles are widely considered the ultimate longer-term alternative to today's conventional cars as they run on an inexhaustible and cheaper source of fuel — hydrogen, have no harmful tail-pipe emissions, and do not compromise driving performance." But here's the real news. "Among the first five customers for the FCX Clarity [who cleared the exhaustive qualification process] are actress Jamie Lee Curtis and U.S. filmmaker Christopher Guest." It's a sad day for Ed Begley Jr. and his wife, the over-spelled Rachelle Carson.
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Shhh…Don’t tell this guy(https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/hybrid-schmaloney/) some people from Hellywood signed up for leases…
Gm? What exactly you don`t understand how the Honda is making profits? Like selling real cars, that people want, with quality they demand. And you don`t need to wave flags, slogans, charts with skyrocketing gains of future stocks, or invent fancy names, colours or rebate gambling. How about instead of buying some other manufacturer and sucking it dry, BUILD actual cars according to market needs. Honda builds Clarity because fuel prices evidently tell so. What does 4 bucks a gallon price tells to Gm? Nothing. They bleed like heroes and stubborn like donkeys ram the wall with trucks and gargantuan SUVs . Or actually they don`t have resources to build real competetive diversity, so they plug cuts with discounts. By the way Detroit planned to invest 6 billion in gambling business development. Here we go , engineering abilities…
Please note that Honda’s main hyrodgen refueling stations are solar powered (with Honda solar panels that require 40% less energy and precious metals to make than standard solar panels). The refueling stations do use energy from the grid however no where near as much as the detractors and critics claim. If Honda can further improve panel prodution efficiency, panel solar efficiency and the Fuel Stack’s efficiency then hydrogen cars should become more feasible.
@ jaje:
What about all the precious metals needed to make a hydrogen fuel cell?
jaje
Honda’s main hyrodgen refueling stations are solar powered
Honda has published plans for a solar-powered home energy station that can produce hydrogen for such a car, and has also demonstrated similar home energy systems that take in natural gas and produce heat, hot water, hydrogen and electricity. All things considered, this latter system is probably what most of the 200 test households are getting. It’s the one getting most of the press and demonstration time. Still, it’s pretty efficient and cost effective, so probably a good thing.
For a solar powered station, other than one in your house generating just enough hydrogen for your own car, the numbers simply don’t add up. You can’t have a public fuel station get all its energy from its roof, and have enough to fuel all cars that might show up. You’d need to draw the huge majority of your electricity from the grid.
Assume a standard gas station occupies 10,000 square feet of land. This is very roughly 1,000 square meters. Assume you cover all that with a solar panel roof. That roof will provide, on average, 100 kwh of electricity per day. Take, as a comparison, the much-mocked Tesla roadster, which needs a battery pack capable of holding 20 to 30 kwh in order to meet its range goals. Assume that a similar amount of electricity has to be turned into potential energy stored in hydrogen gas for each fuel cell car you want to fill up. Bottom line: Your solar cells put out enough juice to fully refuel 3 to 5 fuel cell cars per day, at the most.
How many cars do you think stop at an average traditional gas station per day?
(Hint: More than five.)
The fuel cell vehicle is a non-starter, and in the future, this “test by the public” of the Clarity cars will be looked back in much the same way as we now look back on the Chrysler Turbine cars lent to 500 customers from 1963-1965.
Just a footnote to history.
In the meanwhile, gas electric hybrids continue on to reduce the use of hydrocarbons, while this Clarity obviously is not the “complete break” from hydrocarbons that would be the “holy grail” at all. Much of the hydrogen is from natural gas, and as noted by NBK-Boston, this fact can’t be altered due to physics and reality.
I personally would prefer that we skip the so-called “hydrogen economy” and go straight on to the “electron economy” and electric cars where practical, gas electric hybrids where needed and perhaps clean diesel hydraulic hybrid trucks where possible (I’m talking about REAL trucks, you know, ones that actually WORK for a living).
Looks like the beginnings of the Toyota Prius all over again.
I’m not sure of the makeup of the fuel cells and precious metals – but many components such as catalytic converters in today’s cars also require precious metals (I think Honda did develop a cat converter that used significantly less) – just look at Catalytic Converter thefts from truck/suvs b/c of ease of crawling under neat to unbolt or cut them out.
I see this as a race of battery powered and fuel cell powered electic cars. Which technology has the greatest potential? Batteries use precious metals too so that argument doesn’t work here. Batteries need to be recharged using power from the grid the same as electrolosys to create hyrodgen.
Batteries weigh a significant amount versus a fuel cell unit which is pretty light. The hyrdogen tank does have some weight but I would doubt it weighs as much as a battery pack – meaning fuel cells have potential for providing the same power but with less weight (greater efficiency).
Does anyone know about the boil-off specs in the Clarity? The BMW 7h loses one-ninth of its hydrogen in its tank every day to boil-off: as the super-cooled hydrogen warms off, some of it has to escape, unless its being “burned” fast enough. Leave a fully-fueled 7h at the long-term airport lot on a nine-day trip; come back and its empty.
It’s not just the weight of the components that don’t make a lot of sense in the fuel cell scheme of things, it the overall expense.
I mean, let’s look at reality.
A Civic Hybrid or Prius costs $23,000, and can get 45 and 50 mpg in the real world, respectively.
The Clarity – if it were mass produced – “might” cost $200,000, and gets the equivalent of 73 mpg (using gasoline as a comparison) on hydrogen, of which most will come from – natural gas.
A Civic CNG car – that’s compressed natural gas – also uses natural gas without it having to be reformed into hydrogen first, and with the home fuelling PHILL unit, runs about $29,000. The efficiency is not quite as good, I think it is about 35 mpg (using gasoline as a comparison).
An electric car using nickel metal hydride batteries in mass production right now and not using any “advanced technologies” like the Clarity, would have limited range, but should cost in the range of $40,000 for a Fit-sized car, as a WAG (“wild-ass-guess”) given that the Chinese and an American outfit are trying to sort out a Chinese sedan with electric propulsion to sell for $30,000 (and to be honest, I’d be happier buying a Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru or Mitsubishi electric car, than some converted Chinese sedan – and would gladly pay extra).
Given that an electric car could last for decades, could have “battery swap stations” with rechargers along the roadway (eventually), or could simply be used for short commutes – which most Americans are doing now with their SUV’s – I still say electric is the way to go.
At least, for a good 25% – 35% of our light vehicle needs, anyway.
Best part is, the “grid” could take that (especially given that recharging could be done during off-peak times – i.e. mostly at night).
I don’t disagree that Electic is a way to go either. No one has pushed Fuel Cells this close to mainstream before – they are still to a point unproven and quite expensive. Battery EV cars are simply an evolution of current technology and production and a reason why their costs of development are substantially less. In the short run I could see this as a good solution – but I just see greater potential in fuel cells in the long run – this is as the technology becomes more widely accepted – costs come down substantially – efficieny of fuel stack becomes greater – and hydrogen production becomes more efficient.
The ICE has been around for ~ 110 years which is less than the discovery of electricity and we are only now getting to the point where EVs have become cost effective. Fuel Cells are a technology that is only 40 years old (developed by NASA for space craft).
Looking down the longer term of ownership – batteries will need to be recycled and replaced versus a fuel stack and its storage tank running distilled water will likely last for the life of the vehicle.
IMHO Batteries are simply not adequate power storage devices for automotive purposes. They are heavy, and their energy density just cannot approach that of fuels that use atmospheric oxygen as the other “fuel”. Perhaps some future battery.
I don’t recall exact numbers, but by molecular weight, a tank of gas is in reality only one third of the fuel used, the other two thirds is oxygen from the air.
Umm and I need to add, a fuel cell uses atmoshperic oxygen.
I look at fuel cells as simply a different battery technology. A battery is a means of converting chemical energy into electrical energy. In a fuel cell vehicle, the components of the reaction are stored in a very different way than in an enclosed battery, but the overall principles are more similar than they are different. A fuel cell is a sort of battery where instead of directly recharging it, you feed a fresh supply of “charged” hydrogen. To create the hydgrogen, you split H2O molecules by putting in electrical energy. When the hydrogen and oxygen are recombined in a fuel cell, electricity is released. Electricity in to push the reaction one way, electricity back out when the reaction is controlled in the other direction. BMW is skipping the fuel cell bit by building demonstration ICE vehicles which combine the hydrogen with oxygen in an explosive reaction inside a conventional combustion engine and converting the chemical energy directly to mechanical energy.
All different sorts of vehicle architectures will be tried in the next few decades using various combinations of ICE, battery storage, electric motors, fuel cell storage, etc. and we really do not know which arrangements will win out. Study the early history of automobiles and you will find steam cars, electric cars, diesel cars, 4 cycle cars, 2 cycle cars, air-cooled, water-cooled, front, rear and all wheel drive cars and so on being tried by a huge array of makers. By the 1990s, the vast majority of the market had settled on ICE powered front-engined, front-wheel drive water cooled architectures. So, right now if I were an auto maker I would have agressive R&D programs going in a number of advanced technology areas because the truth is that nobody knows how this is all going to shake out.
There’s always nuclear power, the glowing pink elephant in the room. It’s been given a bad rap (for good reason), but modern nuclear power is pretty green. Certainly we would be better off out of the Saudi’s market domination and control.
Honda’s fleet of fuel cell vehicles is going to be field tested by hollywood celebs and occasionally driven under light conditions. GMs fuel cell vehicles are being tested by commercial users piling on lots of miles.
I know who is taking this seriously, and who is using it as a photo op.
To Paul Niedermeyer:
A quick Google search on the words “fuel cell boil off Honda” nets us this link. So no boil off here (presumably).
To Juniper:
A quick Google search on the words “fcx lease” nets us this link. Mind you, that’s the first generation FCX, not the second generation FCX Clarity. So when Honda says they’ll lease to normal people, they actually have a track record. Who are the other 198 Hollywood celebrities you had in mind?
“The Clarity … might … get the equivalent of 73 mpg (using gasoline as a comparison) on hydrogen, of which most will come from – natural gas.”
That is only a comparison of the potential energy embodied in the hydrogen verses the potential energy embodied in gasoline. It fails to take into account that you need an additional 3x energy to produce that hydrogen in a compressed (or cryogenic) form suitable for the car whereas gasoline needs something like 0.1x more energy to turn oil in the ground into gasoline in your tank. Taking that into consideration, the 73 MPG is really only 73/(1+3) = 18.25 MPG. A car making 20 MPG on gasoline is really more like 20/(1+0.1) = 18.18 MPG. Great! Your $200k small, light, aerodynamic hydrogen car guzzles energy about as well as a midsized all-wheel-drive SUV.
Antohn
Yes, I am sure they will be leasing these to “normal” people also.
However, you have to agree flying an actress to Japan is certainly a publicity stunt.
It would be interesting to know what kind of usage these really get and what will happen after the 3 yr lease.
Umm and I need to add, a fuel cell uses atmoshperic oxygen.
So do cars and animals. I think that if we worry about cars using too much oxygen, we’ll have to start killing people and animals to save Mother Earth.
Somehow, I don’t think that’ll go over well with Greenpeace. The whole killing animals part, I mean.
To SunnyvaleCA:
Not to be inane, but I’ll term your new unit to be called “Gas Compression Energy Factor” or GCEF. So, really, you’re saying that the FCX gets 18.25 miles per gallon-GCEF. And a gas ICE vehicle getting 20 MPG would in fact get 18.18 miles per gallon-GCEF. Could you please convert that back to regular old MPGs so we could compare the FCX to midsized all-wheel-drive SUVs? Actually, now that I look over your equations some more, shouldn’t you be calculating something more along the lines of: 73 MPG / 3 GCEF = 24 MP(G-GCEF) and 20 MPG / .1 GCEF = 200 MP(G-GCEF). Now I’m all confused…
To Juniper:
If you are willing to accept that the entire FCX Clarity exercise isn’t just for publicity, then I (graciously) am willing to accept your argument that Honda should be slated for making a press event too much like a press event.
Antohn, yeah that’s all a bit confusing. I was lumping together the original energy of the gasoline + the additional 10% more energy needed to refine it and then comparing the total energy + source meterial needed in creating and delivering the hydrogen. For hydrogen you can use a whole bunch of natural gas as a source of hydrogen and use a lot of energy to reform and compress it; in this case you have used about 3x energy and 1x original natural gas to produce 1 unit of usable compressed hydrogen. Or you can use electrolysis and get hydrogen from water; even though you aren’t using oil or natural gas or whatever, the energy required for electrolysis and then compression are huge; in this case you used 4x energy (electricity) to produce your 1 unit of compressed hydrogen.
A simplified (if not particularly accurate) way of looking at it is: To put 20 gallons of gasoline in your tank you need 22 gallons to start with… 2 gallons are used just to refine the oil and transport it to your tank. With hydrogen (from natural gas reformation) to put 20 gallons of liquified hydrogen in your tank you need no fewer than 80 gallons to start with… 60 gallons are used up in refining, compressing, and transporting. Hydrogen via electrolysis is a bit more of a stretch in this simplified model, but just pretend you need 60 gallons of gasoline to burn to create electricity to run the electrolysis and compression, etc.
Here’s a great website. The website mostly compares hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles to battery operated ones. However, it clearly outlines the huge energy amounts required to deliver hydrogen to a fuel-cell vehicle. http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html
Juniper – how many total GM fuel cells are on the road today for “commericial” testing (do you have stats on the mileage total, etc.) – you seem to speak from a position of knowledge (at least that is what your posts sound like)?
Now I thought these hydrogen cars were to create a “mainstream” alternative to dino fueled cars anyway – that includes “consumers” and “celebrities”. You seem to think that Honda’s FCX vehicles and 600 cars they will lease are somehow empty promises and publicity stunts (we all know GM is well known to say one thing and then do another). For instance, let’s count out how many GM Hywires we’ve seen go to production or be provided to anyone? Zip, zero, zilch.