Edmunds spends a few days with the Honda FCX Clarity
Honda FCX Clarity - Click above for high-res gallery
When we first had the opportunity to drive the Honda FCX Clarity way back in November 2007 we only had about a couple of hours with the fuel cell sedan. John O'Dell, a senior editor at Edmunds, actually got to spend a few days with the Clarity recently when Honda decided to put one in its California press fleet. Like other well-developed, electrically-driven cars, be they battery or fuel cell powered, the Clarity behaves pretty much how you would expect any modern car to drive. The efficient packaging job that Honda has done with the the Clarity means that it has about a quarter more interior volume than a similarly-sized Accord. As drivers participating in GM's Project Driveway and lessees of the Clarity will agree, the technology works. It's just a matter of optimizing and mass producing it to get the cost down.
The real problem lies in constructing a fueling network. With only two stations near his home and office, O'Dell was well aware of the issues. The actual act of fueling was not radically different from putting gas or diesel in a current ICE car. The main difference is that the filler nozzle has a clamp to lock it onto the fuel nipple on the car. Filling takes about 3-4 minutes. After that you're off and running again.
Gallery: 2009 Honda FCX Clarity First drive
[Source: Edmunds Green Car Advisor]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tony Belding 8:48AM (9/07/2009)
The article notes the efficiency of converting (or re-forming) natural gas into hydrogen. That may be true. . . but it seems like missing the point, doesn't it? Natural gas is going to run out too, just like oil. Plus, if we really wanted to run cars on natural gas, why not use it directly? Converting existing engines to run on natural gas is quite easy.
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GoodCheer 9:50AM (9/07/2009)
... as is building a natural gas fuel cell, which saves a step.
Dino 10:23AM (9/07/2009)
The reason you might want to run the natural gas or hydrogen reformed natural gas through a fuel cell rather than burn it is fuel cells aren't subject to heat engine efficiency thermodynamics. Its hard to make a heat engine more than say 50% thermally efficient (30% is common for automotive engines). Fuel cells on the other hand can be in theory very close to 100% efficient.
Now you alluded to a very good point, which is that it seems silly to introduce another energy conversion step when you don't really have one. SMR can be about 75% efficient, and lets say a fuel cell is 80% efficient, thats a process efficiency of 60%. Back of the envelope, it seems like it could win over natural gas combustion, but you would have to look at a WTW energy analysis to find out which really makes more sense from an energy standpoint (hydrogen transport, pumping energy during fueling,etc).
Chris M 5:12PM (9/07/2009)
The energy efficiency of steam reforming of natural gas is about 66%, add in 50% efficiency of typical H2PEM fuel cells and 92% efficiency of electric motors, you'd have an overall efficiency of about 30%, not much better than the 15% to 20% efficiency of typical gassers or the 20% to 30% efficiency of hybrids. It's hard to justify the much higher cost for such a minor improvement.
GoodCheer is right, a solid oxide fuel cell running directly on natural gas would be much more efficient, though the high operating temperatures of solid oxide fuel cells can be a problem for automotive use. Natural gas has a much better volumetric energy density, so a natural gas fueled vehicle would get much better range than the equivalent H2 fueled vehicle.
XYZ 6:54PM (9/07/2009)
...hey guys, quite nice without any spam from Greggy :o)
gorr 10:30AM (9/07/2009)
As this car is green, non-polluting, better, less complicated, cheaper to build and maintain, drive better without noise, last longer then the only remaining question is how much cost one kilo of hydrogen to produce from water. I want to see the green crowd doing practical experiments in producing one kilo of hydrogen at 10 000 p.s.i with the latest methods available. Im sure that the cost of production of shell at 8-13$ a kilo can be beat. Im pretty sure that with an efficient small electrolyzer, it can amount to 10 cents a kilo, approx. Then if you sell it at 20 cents/kilo, you do 50% profit margin. Plants, trees, algea, mud, grass, leafs, are doing this since millions of years 24/24, 7/7, 365.25/365.25 days a years without subsidies or energy loss and without making my sick with questions and social heresy abouth 'energy' ( religion ).
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Dave B 11:05AM (9/07/2009)
Gorr,
You've identified the one reason hydrogen has not become the predominant fuel already.
Cost.........Fueling the FCX Clarity maybe routine, but it is not cheap.
Most users are reporting the current cost at $12 -$13 per kg, making Hydrogen 4 times the cost of gasoline in order to drive the same number of miles. Until we develop more cost efficient ways to produce hydrogen, those numbers will not change significantly any time soon.
I would love to see these cars come to market, just like I would like to see electric cars, but in a free market economy, the economics drive the market.
No matter how good, how clean, or how fast a car is. If the economics don't work, you just don't have a marketable product.
phez 12:11PM (9/07/2009)
Where do you see people reporting $12/kg? Its more like $4-5.
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/story.html?id=1870827&s=Related+Topics&is=Fuel%20Cells&it=Topic
jake 3:42PM (9/07/2009)
@phez
I thought it was around $5-6 too (for distributed natural gas production). However a member here reported that they only posted hydrogen price (in the US) they saw was ~$13. It would be very nice if someone can go out and find a picture of the posted price of hydrogen in the US, however it may be a fruitless exercise since almost all hydrogen stations out today are heavily subsidized in some way.
Also the article you posted mentions with mass production they can get it down to $3-4, however, I don't see how that will be true since distributed natural gas (the only type so far which can possibly achieve these kinds of prices) doesn't really depend on any sort of hydrogen infrastructure (depends more on natural gas infrastructure). If the issue is getting enough drivers to cover the cost, then I don't think the $5-6 reflects the true cost either, since I don't think any of these stations can cover their own cost with so little volume of customers. The article about the Clarity seems to support this and it mentions:
"There's no real 'market' price for hydrogen fuel, so Honda arbitrarily assigns a price of $5 per liter just so the pump dial will show something. It showed $7.15 when the pump clicked off, meaning the tank took 1.43 kg."
gorr 4:39PM (9/07/2009)
Would you please talk technically for 1 minutes. It cost nothing to produce hydrogen with a windmill or a solar panel from water once the machinery is installed. To get more production you can surrelly put some power in the machine if you sell to many consumers a day, it's more practical been connected to the grid with much power and 24/24 workability because windmills and solar panels are s&it products if you want my opinion. With the right machineries, cost of 10-20 cents a kilo are possible because it's a very easy reaction to produce, the right electrodes, lighting, ambiant temperatures, pression, contact area, plumbing, etc can be agenced cleverly without consultation from shell, exxon, wall street traders, e.p.a, afs-trinity, chris m, autobloggreen, green car congress, ford, toyota, gm, freightliner, nasa, procter and gambles, citgo, saudi-arabia, banks, income tax, even if all these folks are really interrested in that very precise question.
Mel 1:04PM (9/08/2009)
Like it costs nothing to drive a battery electric vehicle once the car and the solar panels/windmills to charge it are in place ;-))
gorr 1:12PM (9/09/2009)
Mel , it's possible to charge battery cars with windmills and solar panels for free even if nobody is doing so while there is many many battery cars in the u.s.a actually like tesla and the cars that peoples converted since the last 10-15 years. It's possible but i never saw any articles or report news showing it. Very stange how the green car market is not devellopped even if it's an very easy technological act, a child of 11 years old can install and conceive a system at home to recharge a battery car with a windmill or solar panels, it's very easy if the old farted adults around let do the child without infecting this task with no non-sence theory like: renewable, well to wheels efficiency, energy efficiency, energy source, etc.
But on the other hand, the theory that was missing or if your prefer the theory of energy in moving devises( cars, motorcycles, electrical generation, trains, airplanes, race cars, space shuttles, submarines, jet skis, snowmobile, tv's, computers, nascar, formula one, trucks, go-karts, luxury liners ) was discovered by einstein, it's e=mc2, since then he was reconize as a genius and well respected but his theory was not put in practice.
The theory say energy equal mass see by a light. So if you see a mass of something, then you have energy because you are a light liking it or not.
So if you have a mass of water, then you make energy with it in an adapted devise like a car, a motorcycle a ship, etc. Water contrary to sun, gasoline, diesel, coal, natural gas, windmills, ethanol, plugs, gasoline electrical generator, batteries, tidal, nuclear, etc are more complicated because they are arduous machinery that give few output power, cost a lot, are slow process like petrol extracting, dealing, transporting, refining, fueling, burning in ice, engine programming, hypermilling, tax for co2 emissions control, etc, and after that you are left with an empty tank and you have to do it again from the start again and again till there is nothing except money in goverment regulated folks pockets( c.i.a, exxon, republicans, democrats, goverment folks like scientists, gm, us army, zone 51, etc). Water is simple and faster and non-polluting because it's the only system that repeat his actions again and again, water-hydrogen-water again and again since the beginning of the universe till the end. The theory of e= mc2 is respected and used in such a system because the energy come from the mass of water circulating in an adapted devise. The theory of a lot of folks are wrong when they called the theory of thermodynamic that say that the electricity you put in cannot be greater then the electricity out, it's more electricity out that is true because you use the mass of water, you don't use only the electricity put in, you use the whole system and the energy come from water changing his state for a while and returning to water. Gasoline cannot circulate in an adapted devise because his constitution change and cannot be used back into the devise, that's why gm is against water and anything except gasoline for their shareholders( c.i.a, wall street, goverment, big oil, chinese goverment, japan goverment, europe goverment, afs-trinity, etc.
polo 11:48AM (9/07/2009)
"It's just a matter of optimizing and mass producing it to get the cost down."
Oh. So thats all? I would think they'd need revolutionary technological breakthroughs to get the $2Million car pictured above down to the price of an Accord. Going by that same logic and reasoning, batteries and powertrains for EVs should cost under a $100 once mass production and "optimizing" occurs.
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Ray 12:11PM (9/07/2009)
"The real problem lies in constructing a fueling network"
No the real problem lies in creating a fuel from a source that is renewable. (Not NG) Once you have created hydrogen from renewable sources then the trick is to create it with out using two wind generators to make the car go the same distance as a EV would go off of one wind generator.
Another real problem is hydrogen makes metal brittle and seeps out very easy. Pipe lines would need constant maintenance and replacement. The real problem is hydrogen is just to expensive to produce, store and transport. Producing the car is really only about 10% of the problem and they have not come close to resolving it yet from what I have seen. Despite all the lovely propaganda, and misdirection.
someEEguy 11:55AM (9/07/2009)
Unfortunately once you convert the natural gas to hydrogen, you then have to compress it and put it in a Honda FCX Clarity with a tank-to-wheel loss of 40% more than negating any efficiency gained by the conversion process its self.
From the Edmund article:
"From their perspective, hydrogen is a more efficient fuel than electricity from the grid because the process of turning natural gas (the basic feedstock for hydrogen as well as for nearly a quarter of the electricity generated in the U.S.) to hydrogen is far more efficient than using it to generate electricity; an efficiency that more than makes up, they say, for battery-electric cars' more-efficient use of energy from battery to wheels."
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polo 4:22PM (9/07/2009)
I hope Edmunds does a follow-up on the $2million-dollar Honda Clarity in 4 years when the fuel cell for every FCX Clarity will have died.
If they wanted some good PR and a $2million-dollar car that lasts longer than 5 years they should have bought some Bugatti Veyrons and held a public lottery for $600 leases. At least they'd be able to sell them after the lease expires.
rob 12:38PM (9/07/2009)
"act of fueling was not radically different from putting gas or diesel in ..."
"Filling takes about 3-4 minutes. After that you're off and running again."
It's statements like these that draw a lot of people to fuel cells. Special chargers, recharge times on the order of a few hours, etc. are perceived as show stoppers to a lot of people.
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Alan 4:06AM (9/08/2009)
It's weird though, how many hours a day are most cars stationary on a drive or in a garage? I was thinking the other day about when I get my EV, how much energy can I get into my car in 8 hours with 230v, then I started thinking, hang on, I don't have to restrict charging to when I'm actually asleep! I can take the car out in the evening if I need to go to the store etc etc but the total amount of time the car is stationary every weekday evening is likely to be nearer 12 hours so I really won't end up caring about 230v charge times especially since this would be a second car only and at some point I'll be able to stop at 1 or 2 gas stations on a longer journey and get the battery back up to 80% in 15 minutes. Yes it would add 30 minutes to a 2 hour journey perhaps, but you know what, I don't care :-)
jake 3:59PM (9/07/2009)
That's only because they are used to gasoline vehicles. They have never had a vehicle which they can easily fuel/charge at home or at work (if a charger is installed). As Alan mentions, it's astonishing how much time a car is parked doing nothing. The only case where this might not be true is on a roadtrip.
And you are completely ignoring the fact that installing this hydrogen fueling infrastructure will cost drastically more than installing chargers or even quick chargers. With a quick charger it's also not radically different than fueling a gas vehicle since they design the plug to be similar to a gas pump. The only difference is it takes 15 minutes rather than 3-4.
Another point the article didn't mention is that while it is true on natural gas, the efficiency is similar (compared with natural gas plant using older technology, combined cycle plants would clearly push the efficiency advantage over to the BEV; I haven't research the proportion of combined cycle plants in the US so I don't have data on the exact situation right now), on renewable energy (the main reason why we are even proposing BEVs and FCVs) it's drastically better using the BEV.
I'm not convinced that consumers won't be able to accept a plug-in or a BEV. With most people having second cars, it seems there is a sizable market where a BEV is suitable. BEVs seem much closer in terms of price (Nissan hints at ~$30k) and infrastructure (garages of people with second cars) than hydrogen is. Also in the long run, it seems hydrogen will be a much more expensive way (esp when looking at infrastructure; vehicle-wise, if the automakers aren't making too optimistic projections, then it might turn out to be about even with BEVs) to accomplish the goal of renewable energy for the automobile, with the main advantage being faster refueling. I'm not sure if it is worth it.
rob 6:23PM (9/07/2009)
Note that I said "perceived as showstoppers". There are people who are absolutely convinced that they need the mother of all SUVs when 99% of the time there is only a driver on board.