Comparing rides: Honda FCX and Chevy Sequel
AutoblogGreen's Sam Abuelsamid is one of the few people who has spent some time behind the wheels of both the Honda FCX and the Chevy Sequel concept vehicles. You can click on either of those names to read what he thought of the drives, and, if you're curious about how the two vehicles compare, you can also check out this post by Consumer Reports' Eric Evarts. In short, Evarts likes the more refined Honda over the futuristic Chevy.
It'll be a while before hydrogen cars are easily available to consumers (which is what I think Consumer Reports is interested in), and by then the kinks that are present in these concepts will hopefully have been worked out. Until then, reports like these will be everyone's link to what it's like to drive a hydrogen car.
Related:
[Source: Consumer Reports]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
haqitman 12:19AM (6/18/2007)
I love the technology, but hate the fuel. Fuel cell cars are basically electric cars, so why not just focus on electric cars?!?! Oh, that's right, the oil companies need something to sell. If people really understood that it takes several times the energy to create the hydrogen to power the car than to simply use a fraction of that same electricity to power the electric car directly, they would all drop this hydrogen nonesense. If oil companies weren't pushing car makers to make something that consumes their product, they would drop it, too. If these car makers put their energies into developing (or at least sourcing) cheap, high (energy) density, rapid charging batteries for these electric drivetrains, we'd see some real progress. But the oil companies stand to lose too much.
Unfortunately the best technology doesn't always win. Betamax, anyone? Honda is my favorite car company and it pains me to see them wasting their time on this folly.
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Dave 6:50AM (6/18/2007)
Hydrogen is chemical energy storage.
Batteries are chemical energy storage.
There is no difference.
Whatsoever.
And Betamax lost because it couldnt hold an entire movie on a single tape. And thank god we have DVDs now, because VHS and Betamax were both inferior.
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Hale Seighton 9:43AM (6/18/2007)
Nice try Dave, you might want to do a little more research into the difference between fuel cell cars and electric cars. There are big differences, one of which, is listed in haqitman's post (energy it takes to create the power).
Also, I remember watching a full movie on a single Beta tape, ironically it was "Christine." I know the Beta tapes were physically smaller but I didn't know they were shorter in recording length.
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Tony Belding 9:48AM (6/18/2007)
To say there's "no difference" between hydrogen and battery storage is ridiculous. There's a huge difference in energy efficiency, and there's also a huge difference in existing infrastructure for distributing electricity versus distributing hydrogen. Both of these factors weigh heavily in favor of battery power.
And since you raised the subject, Dave. . . DVDs provide very little functionality that LDs (12-inch LaserDiscs) hadn't already provided for almost 20 years previously. Why LDs never became widely popular is a mystery to me, though I think they were mostly just ahead of their time.
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pkuhl 10:50AM (6/18/2007)
We keep having to educate everyone on hydrogen because we keep running all these gungho articles on hydrogen fuel cell cars.
Hydrogen is massively inefficient. You have to make it from hydrolysis or reforming, then transport it, then compress it, then use it in the fuel cell to get your electricity. All of those processes use energy.
You could just put that energy in the battery and come out way way ahead.
Read all about it:
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E17.pdf
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Tim 11:13AM (6/18/2007)
Dave's ignorance is a curable disease. He simply needs to read up on the subject. Big energy wants to change our addiction from oil to another product they sell Natural Gas in the form of Hydrogen. Big Auto wants to solicit more tax money to fund the research and they want to APPEAR green.
Most readers of Autobloggreen seem to understand that Hydrogen is a red herring and a way of stalling our transition off oil while stealing our tax dollars from foolish politicians for “research”. I often wonder how much of the general population understands how stupid "They Hydrogen Economy" really is.
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/h_scam.htm http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html
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bioburner 6:25PM (6/19/2007)
I'm glad other people know that the hydrogen economy is stupid. AMEN brother. You can't beleive the number of people that think hydrogen fuel cells are the way to go. It's new technology it's got to be better that what we have now is the usual mind set that I run in to all the time.
Fuel cells are still a developing technology. Maybe some more development and fueling the fuel cell on some other fuel might make it more pratical, but hydrogen I doubt it and I'm sure you will not be seeing that in my driveway.
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Bill 9:24PM (6/18/2007)
I don't know if it is a red herring, but oil companies deperately want to keep selling us some sort of fuel.
20 years ago we couldn't dream of the battery technology we have today (even if it takes 6,800+ AA cells to run a Tesla)
10 years from now we will have batteries we can only dream of today.
In the interim, we have gasoline-electric hybrids, diesel (hopefully diesel-electric hybrids).
Soon enough we will have plug-in hybrids commercially available.
I think most of us will still be using liquids fuels, though maybe not everyday, for some time to come.
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PatrickS 4:29PM (7/02/2007)
Yeah, I guess you guys are right, we should really put all of our eggs in one (battery) basket, keep burning coal (which is SOOO efficient) to make the electricity we need to charge them, move to needing to charge over night instead of fueling in a couple minutes and switch to vehicles that might get us around for 70% of our driving (commuting), but leave you either stranded or needing to buy ANOTHER car to drive the other 30% because they don't provide enough range. That makes SO much sense.
not.
This isn't about hydrogen vs. other technologies. Stop making this somekind of slugfest. We need all of these technologies right now because there is no silver bullet here. Battery vehicles have their challenges as well and are no sure thing unlike what the previous posters seem to believe. Besides, last time I checked, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles ARE electric vehicles.
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jakkkflash 8:16PM (8/04/2007)
So you want us to read that left wing rag CONSUMER DISTORTS to determine the better vehicle? You gotta be kidding.. try again sucker.
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