Honda is close to winning the race in becoming the first carmaker to offer a hydrogen- powered fuel cell car, according to Monsters and Critics. A major barrier to mass production of fuel cell vehicles has been the storage of hydrogen in a compact and effective manner. But Honda has reportedly found a way to extend the range of such vehicles to about 560 kilometres (350 miles). This is made possible by a new hydrogen absorption material, doubling tank capacity to five kilogrammes of hydrogen at 5000 PSI. Honda engineers also solved the problem of cold weather starts, achieving low-temperature starts comparable to gas engines. While many automakers have said it will take then 10 to 15 years to bring a fuel cell car to market, a Honda vehicles based on its FCX Concept could see production in only 48 months.
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02/23, 10:13 AM
posted by:
Northeasterner
Go Honda engineers!
02/23, 10:53 AM
posted by:
Mike
Honda may have a car available in 4 years but you won’t be able to refuel it for many more years than that. Until we price gasoline in this country at the going world price ($4 – $5 per gallon) we won’t see much in the way of alternative fuels being developed.
02/23, 1:05 PM
posted by:
TDIMeister
Who cares about availability? Were gas stations everywhere when cars were first invented a little over a century ago? Every new technology goes through an infancy phase. Don’t like it? Don’t buy one. Even though I’m not a Honda (or even necessarily a fuel-cell) fan, bring it on!
02/23, 1:50 PM
posted by:
Greenspeed
While this is great news, a big concern is how are we going to make all the electric energy that is required to make the hydrogen? (I vote for some new nuclear power plants) Hydrogen is not abundant in the form that is used as fuel (H2). It is abundant in other forms – hydrocarbons and water (H2O) but needs to be electrochemically freed from the oxygen to be useful as a fuel. This requires energy in the form of electricity. Hydrogen is not an answer to our energy woes. It actually requires more energy to generate hydrogen than we can get by using hydrogen as a fuel, so while it may be great in that the car itself only emits water as its exhaust there is another concern with the energy cost of making hydrogen fuel as well as the pollution created by making that energy. Also, its going to take a lot of convincing to get me to want to drive a car down the highway at 65+ MPH with 5000 PSI of pressurized flammable gas underneith me. Maybe their new absorbant helps with this?
02/23, 1:53 PM
posted by:
Mike
TDI…it’s not that I don’t like it, in fact I do like the technology and I applaud Honda on advancements and forward thinking. But the infrastructural demands for a hydrogen fuel transportation system are huge, costly and decades away and until gasoline becomes scare and/or costly we are not going to see anything other than experimental alternatives.
02/23, 4:02 PM
posted by:
manny
the big question, other than ‘will it go hindenburg in an accident?’, it how much will the damned thing cost? last i heard, the FCX cost about a million bucks to build… thats a little high for a car that barely seats four…