Honda Clarity: Fuel cell vehicle (hydrogen fueled)

[sundevil777 102]

It will be available starting in the summer '08. Of course there won't be many of them, and only in 3 southern California cities (Torrance, Santa Monica, Irvine). It will be a 3 year $600/month lease including service/maintenance. The range will be about 270 miles, top speed of 100mph, acceleration like a 4 cylinder Accord. I think Honda is serious about this becoming a mass marketed vehicle in the not so distant future. They've invested a lot of money to execute a totally new, very nice design, and not just cram the hardware into some existing micro mini car.

Not only can solar/wind/whatever power be used to split water to make hydrogen, but for some time now Honda has been developing a home generator/heating system powered by natural gas. It can also make hydrogen for a fuel cell vehicle with much less total CO2 emissions than a gasoline car. A link to a little info on this is in the Honda article below.

Temple of VTEC articles on the Clarity (std press release info and first drive report):

http://www.vtec.net/news/news-item?news_item_id=722358

http://www.vtec.net/articles/view-article?article_id=724661

Honda corporate web site info on Clarity:

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/?from=fcx.honda.com

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[Hausse 0]

I just looked at the official site and I couldn't find how much the running cost will be. Does anybody know how much H2 is used for a mile and how expensive H2 is?

[sundevil777 102]

The first link I provided from the Temple of VTEC quotes a Honda calculation claiming an approximate equivalent of 68 mpg combined fuel economy.

I would think that this means on a 'cost equivalent' basis (the cost of hydrogen to operate it would be as if it got 68 mpg of gasoline used), as opposed to a volume or weight of fuel used basis. I'm not really sure though, and can't find anymore specifics to confirm that.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[billvon 3,119]

Cool. I'm not much of a hydrogen fan, but 90% of the car is basically a battery electric vehicle (BEV) with a small li-ion battery pack. It will be a good test bed for motor/controller/battery technologies, which will help get us real world experience no matter what electric power source we end up using for such vehicles.