Cloudy Thinking
Honda introduced a new hydrogen-fueled car at the LA Auto Show. Details:
Honda Motor Co. said Wednesday it will begin leasing its new FCX Clarity hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered car to a limited number of Southern California drivers this summer.Honda wouldn’t say how many vehicles will be leased. The company plans to offer a three-year lease with a $600 monthly payment. The low-slung, FCX Clarity sedan was unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
Let me see if I have this straight. For about double the monthly payment on a leased entry model Mercedes C-class or BMW 3-series, you can get a car you can’t get fuel for most anywhere, and which has the same ugly-ass rear end as Honda’s first alternative-fueled vehicle that nobody bought, the Insight. Even the names are too similar for comfort.
Skeptical I might be, but I have to admit this part sounds cool:
Honda also is developing a home fueling station that uses a home’s existing natural gas supply to produce hydrogen. The automaker now has such a fueling station on its research and design campus in Torrance.
No more trips to the filling station sure seems nice–but I’m not sure I want the EPA coming to my house every month, demanding I fill out environmental impact statements in triplicate.
As always with hydrogen powered vehicles, my question is why? If you’re getting the hydrogen from natural gas, why not just burn the natural gas? Natural gas is much cheaper to store than hydrogen. It also requires far fewer (and cheaper) modifications to run an engine on it. As an added bonus most of it’s refueling structure is already in place. So can somebody tell me why?
If your only fueling place is home, then this is just an “about town” car. Not something to use on roadtrips.
Ah yes. Making hydrogen from natural gas. What a great idea! ‘Cept that, unless you’re planning on breaking the conservation of energy laws, you’ll get less energy from the hydrogen than you might have directly from the natural gas. This is a good thing for the environment precisely how?
Hydrogen storage at home should be fun as should the refuling operations, see Hindenburg, end of.
Not to mention that converting natural gas to hydrogen releases all the carbon in the gas as… C02!
Honda’s leasing it. I wonder how much the fuel cell costs. Since they lease it, they get fuel cell back at the end of the lease. I mention this because, in article on using hydrogen as fuel (in Pop Science or Pop Mechanics) they said the fuel cells were insanely expensive.