The hydrogen fuel cell vehicle concept, once the darling of the cybergreen/hypercar crowd, has diminished in luster over the past few years. Perhaps it was due to the sluggish pace of development. Perhaps it was due to the all-too-eager embrace of the technology by political and corporate figures well known to favor continued dominance of the petroleum economy. Perhaps it had just started to feel dated, like talking about freezing your head after you die -- a vaguely-embarrassing symbol of a particular era of futurism. That proponents of hydrogen cars kept talking about them being "just a decade away" even as the years progressed didn't help matters.
Honda may change all that.
Last month, Honda announced that it would begin production in Japan of its fuel cell FCX vehicle within the next three to four years. The FCX line has been Honda's fuel cell vehicle prototype for a few years now, and beyond a handful of experimental locations, the car seemed ill-suited to regular use. Tiny, somewhat underpowered, and saddled with a range about half of a typical gasoline-fueled car -- not that you could go long distances away from the one or two hydrogen fueling stations in the state anyway -- the FCX simply wasn't an attractive option. The new FCX design, however, changes all of that, and manages to induce something that previous hydrogen fuel cell vehicles couldn't: auto lust.
Sleek, roomy, and built upon Honda's latest-generation fuel cell system -- a stack providing a hundred kilowatts of power (that's a respectable 134 horsepower) and a hydrogen storage tank allowing over 350 miles range -- Honda's production prototype FCX suddenly looks like a viable contender. As for the fueling issue, two developments may mitigate the problem, at least a bit. In California, the "hydrogen highway" initiative continues to move forward (PDF), promising hydrogen fueling stations every 20 miles along major highways in the state. More importantly, Honda has coupled the announcement of the FCX production with the latest generation of its Home Energy Station (HES) -- and it's this combination that could make the FCX a winner.
The Home Energy Station uses regular natural gas as its base fuel, reforming it into H2 to fuel the FCX at home. But that's not all it does:
The system is equipped with fuel cells that generate and supply electricity to the home, and is configured to recover the heat produced during power generation for domestic water heating. In addition to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by some 40 percent, the HES system is expected to lower the total running cost of household electricity, gas and vehicle fuel by 50 percent.
Plug-in hybrid advocates (and I count myself among them) argue that the ability of the PHEV to function as a home power source when needed make it more useful than simply an advanced form of transportation. Remember, in the bright green world we're trying to build, distributed energy technologies and smart power grids will make home generation a common part of our lives. Not to live "off the grid," mind you, but to be a "grid collaborator," both supplying power to the grid and pulling power from the grid as needs change throughout the day. The FCX+HES combination does that, too, but adds the ability to generate power at home even when the vehicle is out on the road.
Questions remain about whether the FCX will live up to this promise, of course. Honda has not committed to selling the FCX outside of Japan, so it may be another "just a decade away" claim all over again. The Home Energy Station's reliance on natural gas may prove problematic if natural gas prices remain high. And probably most critically, the Honda announcement conspicuously did not mention price; given that the production costs of the earlier, less-stylish or functional generations of Honda fuel cell cars were supposedly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's reasonable to assume that Honda will be spending the next several years feverishly trying to bring the price down to something that regular buyers can afford.
All of that said, I have to admit to getting a bit of a charge out of getting a glimpse of a real-world, consumer-friendly fuel cell vehicle on the near horizon, especially when coupled to the home power system. I'm still not convinced that fuel cells will win out over all-electric (especially with recent advances in high-efficiency ultracapacitors with battery-equivalent energy densities), but I'm happy to see the competition for next-generation personal transportation get lively once again.
