Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell car

By George Skentzos | November 15th, 2007

Honda has unveiled the all-new FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle at the Los Angeles Auto Show overnight, with plans to begin limited retail marketing of the car by mid-2008.

The FCX Clarity is a zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle utilising the entirely-new Honda V Flow cell platform.

Honda’s V Flow stack is used in combination with a new compact and efficient lithium ion battery pack and a single hydrogen storage tank to power the vehicle’s electric drive motor.

Hydrogen combines with atmospheric oxygen in the fuel cell stack, where chemical energy from the reaction is converted into electric power used to propel the vehicle with a maximum output of 100kW and 256Nm.

Additional energy captured through regenerative braking and deceleration is stored in the lithium ion battery pack, and used to supplement power from the fuel cell, when needed. The vehicle’s only emission is water.

This next generation FCX Clarity boasts significant improvements over its predecessor. This includes a 20-percent increase in fuel economy equivalent to 68mpg or roughly 3.5-litres per 100km, and a 30-percent increase in range to 435km.

Its environmental theme is continued in the interior, where the seat upholstery and door linings are manufactured from Honda Bio-Fabric – a plant-based material, as well as a full compliment of advanced safety, comfort and convenience features which include sat nav, a rear parking camera, climate-controlled seats and Bluetooth connectivity.

Despite the FCX Clarity’s only emission being water, CO2 is still produced through the production of hydrogen, although this is still less than half that produced by a conventional petrol vehicle.

Myke

Not a fan of Honda’s new smiley face front design. Although this isn’t as bad as the CR-V, but way too much chrome.
arsenalroc

its good seeing a major manufacturer come out with a car like this.. i am curious are the power delivery though…will it be linear all the way?
Tom

I assume the power delivery will be just like all electrics, huge torque at low motor rpm that linearly decreases as revs increase, but with decent gearing (CVT works really well for electrics) you can keep on that huge torque at low rpm. As for power generation, current fuel cells don’t experience a voltage drop like current batteries do when they approach depletion, so long as you can pump in the hydrogen and oxygen in the power production remains constant until the it just stops.
arsenalroc

ahh thanks for the info
it would very interesting to drive this car… i would assume its dead silent
Astro Boy

Hmm yeah me too i dont like their new chromed mo style. Looks crap. It should be like the civic hatch with its H badge behind the glass, looks space age. This looks ummm american.
Andrew

“This next generation FCX Clarity boasts significant improvements over its predecessor. This includes a 20-percent increase in fuel economy equivalent to 68mpg or roughly 3.5-litres per 100km, and a 30-percent increase in range to 435km.”

I don’t get it… if it’s a hydrogen powered car what exactly are we talking about when we say 3.5litres per 100km?!

Chris

Think about for a second. It’s a hydrogen fueled car. Liters are a measure of volume, not a measure of an amount of liquid.

It uses 3.5L/100km of HYDROGEN!
In this case, it is a compressed, liquefied form of Hydrogen.

Astro Boy

Exactly! what do they mean in litres per 100km, the figures can change with different pressures of the hydrogen in the tank. Thats why it should be measured in kilograms per 100km.
Tom

i wondered that too astro boy, so I looked up the honda press release. The hydrogen tank doesn’t store the hydrogen as liquid as cooling it to 20K would be impractical, instead the hydrogen is stored at 5000 psi, so that 171 litre tank can store 5 kg of hydrogen, which is a lot for hydrogen gas.

The fuel consumption figure they use is to show the equivalent fuel consumption of a petrol engine if it was as efficient and as powerful as the FCX drivetrain. In other words, its Honda showing off that the fuel cell/electric motor combination is more efficient than the equivalent petrol engine. Trusty ol’ wikipedia says that the new FCX is 60% efficient compared to the 20-25% energy efficiency of the average internal combustion engine.
David

MPG or Litres per 100km? Hydrogen is liquid above a certain pressure once this pressure is reached or exceeded, more pressure doesn’t mean more atoms in the bucket. I would logically assume the Gallons or Litres refer to the element as a liquid at the required pressure. Auto LPG is sold as liquid litres so logically hydrogen can be refered to as liquid litres as well.
TP

Im not to sure about the battery setup, there is a huge usage of energy to produce them. The next task is to create non CO2 mer\thods of creating hydrogen.

matt

if your that concerned, sell every luxury item you own and find a nice spot in the bush to live out your days in perfect harmony with nature.

http://thecartoonist.com.au Ebby

I would just like to know when the average bloke in the street can get his hands on one of these? It’s about time we did something about these oil parasites holding the world to ransom!
http://thecartoonist.com.au Ebby

If they are reasonably priced and you could fill them with filtered tap water, no one would buy anything else!!
slivia

they keep it as 3.5l/100km because no-one would really understand if they put it as kg/100kg or something like that.
Greg

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for alternative fuels – for reasons not the least of which, cars will not survive without them. but if there’s a million+ cars in any given city, emitting water vapor all day every day, won’t that have an effect on weather patterns?

kizz

I suppose it would a little but no more so than what is currently being emmitted by petrol cars and the effect pollution has on weather.

http://www.databaseapplications.com.au Chris M

There were some comments about the fuel economy of this car. The figures mentioned in the article are way, way off. Here’s the nitty gritty: Honda says this car will deliver 60 miles to a Kg of fuel. They say the tank holds 3.92Kg of hydrogen. The density of liquid hydrogen is 0.07Kg weight per litre. That gives us a 56L tank. The 60 miles translates to 96.56Km. The Kg of fuel used per 60 miles translates to 14.2857L. Together that translates to 14.7946L/100Km. To give you an idea, my new Hyundai Getz 1400 has used 6.8L/100Km in the 6000Km since bought new. This is of course plain old petrol.

The range per tankful works out at 378.5Km or 235 miles. Honda says 240 miles on their site.

Liquid hydrogen costs about UD$5/USGallon in California. The site I got this price from also says that translates to 1Kg of liquid hydrogen, which is just dead wrong. Petrol costs about $3 and slightly less in California per US gallon. That means, as far as fuel costs are concerned, the Honda Clarity is horrendously expensive to run. No wonder there is nothing on the Honda site about fuel cost comparison with petrol or diesel powered cars. One has to read between the lines.