Honda FCX Clarity to be pace car for Japanese IndyCar race
This weekend at the Twin Ring Motegi track in Japan, the Honda FCX Clarity will be showing its pace by taking on the duties of a pace car. The Indy Racing League is making its annual trek to the homeland of engine supplier Honda for the Indy Japan 300 race at the facility near Tochigi. The fuel cell-powered Clarity will take the place of the usual fleet of Honda Accords as it leads the IndyCars to the green flag and keeps the racers in line while the yellow flag is out. This will be the first race paced by a hydrogen-fueled car; the field of 18 cars that crossed the Pacific are all running on E100 ethanol.
The FCX Clarity will be first series production fuel cell car when it becomes available for lease in Southern California this summer. Honda will be making about 100 Clarities a year available with more to come as hydrogen availability increases (if it does). The Clarity has a range of 270 miles from the 4kg of compressed hydrogen it carries. According to Honda spokesman Todd Mittleman, the company had received about 20,000 inquiries about leasing the Clarity since its debut at last November's LA Auto Show.
[Source: Honda]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Throwback 11:22AM (4/18/2008)
I would love to lease this car, but there are no Hydrogen stations near me. I would even be willing to have them install a converter to run off my natural gas line, if I could get a FCX for my daily commute.
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steven 11:39AM (4/18/2008)
We're getting overly technical now, but GM actually had a hydrogen powered pace car at a race in Sept 2000 and Honda has before too, in March of 2004. Yes, I know, Sam meant to say automobile race. ;-)
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Aimless 12:18PM (4/18/2008)
Up to 270 miles on a 4kg tank. But how far will it go at 100 mph?
Its mighty emberassing if the pace car needs to go in for a pitstop.
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Ryan 12:19PM (4/18/2008)
Throwback: visit automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/ for all the info, but you can't "convert" a hydrogen fuel cell to use natural gas. This is not an internal combustion vehicle. It's basicallly an electric vehcle powered by electicity that is generated on-board by the hydrogen fuel cell.
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tankd0g 12:27PM (4/18/2008)
You get hydrogen FROM natural gas through reformation.
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Tim 12:55PM (4/18/2008)
If you reform at home as Honda suggests, where does the carbon go?
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paulwesterberg 1:44PM (4/18/2008)
Hydrogen is not naturally occurring so you need to create it by reforming or electrolysis, both processes are not very efficient. Hydrogen is another transportation fuel technology like corn ethanol that fails to reduce environmental impacts.
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In a well-to-wheel comparison, a gasoline-powered Prius is actually more efficient than a typical hydrogen-powered FCV. Toyota estimates that Prius has a well-to-wheel efficiency of 29% versus 22% for a typical FCV. How can this be? The answer lies in the expenditure of energy involved in producing and transporting hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a manufactured fuel. As such, its production requires electric power, which is generated in fossil fuel-powered plants. More energy is expended in producing and distributing hydrogen than is released when it is consumed in a fuel cell.
In contrast, gasoline releases more energy in a car's engine than is needed to pump, refine and transport it. This is a critical factor in making today's hybrids actually more efficient than FCVs in a well-to-wheel context.
Toyota estimates that the efficiency of fuel production and delivery to the vehicle's tank is 79% for gasoline versus 58% for hydrogen that is manufactured from natural gas. Natural gas "reforming" is the most common method of hydrogen production. The other major process is electrolysis, in which electric currents split pure water into hydrogen and oxygen.
More information from toyota's web site:
http://www.toyota.com/html/hybridsynergyview/2005/fall/hybridorhydrogen.html
Electrolysis from renewable sources might be interesting, but it is only 70% efficient at best where batteries are 90%.
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paulwesterberg 1:51PM (4/18/2008)
Here is a comparison of fuels and their well to wheel greenhouse gas emissions:
http://www.mizuho-ir.co.jp/english/knowledge/wtwghg041130.html
Natural Gas Fuel cell vehicles are only slightly better than gasoline hybrid vehicles.
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paulwesterberg 2:06PM (4/18/2008)
Probably the most efficient, least polluting vehicles in the near term are likely to be diesel plug-in hybrids.
People would have multiple fuel source options which would allow them to avoid diesel price spikes and over time as more renewable grid sources came online the impact of coal electrical generation would decrease.
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KarenRei 2:27PM (4/18/2008)
Here's another study, same results:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2S-4M04DW9-1&_user=440026&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000020939&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=440026&md5=e7b3b8bfb288aaed28ee38d247e49a24
Basic summary: Hydrogen is very inefficient, while batteries plus grid power is very efficient.
The question isn't really, "What's wrong with a hydrogen economy"; that's the easy part. A much better question is, "What's *right* about a hydrogen economy in comparison to its competition?" Modern EVs match hydrogen on range (compare tzero to FCX, for example), are roughly similar mass, are significantly more efficient, are significantly safer, need vastly less infrastructure investment (and it's even more extreme when you factor in the hydrogen production), have similar fill/charge times (~5 mins or so on modern batteries), generally significantly outperform, are comparable in price at the upper end and far cheaper at the lower end when unsubisidzed, are better for the environment (not only are batteries recycleable, but popular modern ones like LiP are largely nontoxic anyways; on the other hand, hydrogen destroys ozone) and on and on. What is *right* about the hydrogen economy? What possibly could make it *better* than using BEVs with modern batteries and our already existing, cheap-to-charge-from infrastructure?
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steven 3:22PM (4/18/2008)
If you approach it logically, without the bias of Honda (who wants you to buy/lease this car or Toyota who does not want you to buy the Honda) the concept of a home natural gas to hydrogen system seems to have one big unanswered question that maybe someone can answer:
How much hydrogen can you extract from natural gas without making the natural gas unusable as a fuel for your home or without completely converting your home over to hydrogen?
From 10th grade chemistry we learned that natural gas is mostly (> 85%) methane(CH4). So if you take the hydrogen out, you end up with carbon, usually in the form of CO2, or worse CO, depending on the method of reformation used. As others have asked, where does that go? Yes, we're pretty much ruling out electrolysis which we also learned how to do in the high school chem lab.
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steven 3:38PM (4/18/2008)
@KarenRei: We've asked you before
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/17/shell-chief-sees-h2-difficulties
we'll ask you again... What(B)EVs have these "5 min [recharge] batteries"?
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KarenRei 4:04PM (4/18/2008)
Steven: You did ask before. On the very thread you linked. On which I responded (post #8). :)
Lithium phosphate, titanate, and spinel batteries tend to be able to take a very fast charge. And these are the most popular types of batteries for next-gen EVs.
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Joseph 8:56PM (4/18/2008)
Wow, 20,000 inquiries!
Out of those 20k, how many lived within a few miles of a fueling station? That's the sad part of reality.
I don't know ANYTHING about Indy Racing. So can someone please expalin to me how the FCX, of average acceleration and power, can lead Indy Cars?
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mike 8:07PM (4/18/2008)
Why does Honda keep trying to sell us this H2 BS? Is it time for a Shareholder Revolt? Maybe we need to ask Honda's CEO to RESIGN.
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James 8:46PM (4/18/2008)
Here we go again about how hydrogen is produced in this present time, and how inefficient it is right now. But how do we know what hydrogen fuel cells will be like 10 or 20 years from now and how hydrogen will be made. We need to keep and open mind about all forms of future fuels if not we are all fools.
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BlackbirdHighway 10:35PM (4/18/2008)
Well, the quick charge batteries haven't made it into any production BEVs yet, but then there are so very few production BEVs right now anyway.
There are several companies that claim to be developing BEVs with the quick charge batteries, Lightning and Phoenix among them.
The one actual road test involing quick charges was a converted Fiat Doblo using AltairNano batteries. It was written up on Autobloggreen:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/10/16/more-on-the-altairnano-powered-fiat-doblo-in-norway/
While the range of only about 60 miles per charge was nothing to write home about, it did serve to prove the quick charge (10 minutes) concept. According to the article, the car has been quick charged over 50 times. A 10 minute recharge is only slightly longer than a regular
gasoline fill up.
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meme 10:37PM (4/18/2008)
"But how do we know what hydrogen fuel cells will be like 10 or 20 years from now and how hydrogen will be made."
Yes, we do. It's called Gibbs free energy. And it's also limited by the more voltage you try to draw, the less efficiency you get. These are physical limits imposed by the laws of thermodynamics.
Any other questions?
You're hoping for a miracle to change the laws of thermodynamics when there's already an actual solution here: batteries. They already exist and already work and are already superior to fuel cells in essentially every regard.
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Kevin Nugent 9:39PM (4/19/2008)
Hope they don't run our of juice
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