The very first set of keys for Honda's brand new FCX Clarity have been delivered to film producer Ron Yerxa and Annette Ballester. The duo took delivery of their new hydrogen fuel cell-powered FCX Clarity on Friday, July 25, 2008 at Honda of Santa Monica. Now that the first production second-gen FCX has been delivered, we'd imagine that Jon Spallino, Jim Salomon, Laura Harris, and Jamie Lee Curtis will be getting phone calls of their own in no time at all. Mr. Spallino has actually been driving an FCX for the last three years, though it was one of Honda's first generation efforts. The new car is worlds better, featuring a new vertical flow fuel cell stack delivering a 270 mile range.
Despite the fact that Honda has delivered its first set of FCX Clarity keys, don't go rushing to your nearest Honda dealership to get your own. There are only three U.S. dealerships certified to lease hydrogen Hondas at the moment, and all of them are in the far-left state. So, if you want one... perhaps a move to Southern Cal. is in order.


[Source: Honda]

A quick Google search is all that is required to find hundreds of stories of people who claim to have increased their fuel mileage by installing a hydrogen generator which extracts hydrogen and oxygen from water and funnels the gas into the engine. Some of the claims are pretty wild, and the Japanese company Genepax has again lit a fire under the topic of running a car on water. While the Genepax car uses a conventional fuel cell, most of the "kits" available on the Internet introduce a bit of gas into the engine which is then combusted along with the liquid gasoline.

It is, of course, natural to feel a desire to buy into the hype promised by these systems. The truth, though, is that large fuel economy gains are highly unlikely. Popular Mechanics has decided to build themselves one of these systems for testing. The mag intends to install the finished product in an automobile and report back. We're keenly interested in their findings, though we're pretty sure we already know what will happen. Stay tuned.

[Source Popular Mechanics]

Recently, Bibi van der Zee, a writer for the Guardian Unlimited, took a test drive in one of BMW's Hydrogen 7s. It's a damn comfortable ride, as I experienced at the AFVI conference a few months ago. Van der Zee calls the chance "irresistible," but quickly confronted the question (as we all must when hydrogen cars come up): "What's the point of making hydrogen-powered cars if there's no fuel for them?"

The article, then, is a look at the problems facing adoption of a hydrogen infrastructure here in May, 2007. We've heard a lot of this before: how to make the hydrogen in the first place, electric cars as a better choice, the constant "five to ten years from now" timeframe. I think she makes too much of a stumbling block out of the way different manufacturers are designing hydrogen cars (ICE vs. fuel cells), since the engineers are way ahead of the curve on this one and they'll have plenty of time to reconfigure powertrain parts in time for the appearance of widespread hydrogen fuel pumps.

Van der Zee even says that the hydrogen pipe dream is a bit of an American fantasy (even though it a BMW she was riding in), which I found interesting. Another bit that we don't hear much (but should be pretty obvious), is that, "an oil company insider tells me that very few people in their industry take hydrogen (or electricity for that matter) very seriously at all; it's just not considered a viable mainstream prospect. The majority of the industry believes that the future will lie in bio-fuels (which, as we are increasingly hearing, come with their own major pitfalls) and perceives hydrogen and electricity as having little more than novelty value." We do hear a lot from Chevron and the like about their biofuels programs. Could they be one of the largest factors holding back the hydrogen economy?



[Source: Guardian Unlimited]

Motor Trend has written a little piece on Honda's latest generation of the FCX, a vehicle powered by electricity which is generated by a hydrogen fuel cell. Honda is claiming that the vehicle would get the equivalent of 68 miles per gallon, if, of course, it were powered by X gallons of gas and not X pounds per square inch of hydrogen. If that sounds appealing to you, and you are not worried about the not-so-abundant source of places to fill up on hydrogen, time to start thinking about getting in line. Honda says that they are going to start offering the latest version of the FCX next year. How many, and at what price? Dunno, but Motor Trend speculates that they will offer them under lease, not making them available for purchase. I would tend to agree. Maybe they should lease home hydrogen filling stations too? Or should they skip the FCX completely? If you'd rather have a Honda Hybrid, stay tuned for more news on that front. Check out our exclusive coverage of the FCX below:

Related:

• Honda FCX concept fuel cell car in depth, Pt. 1 - The new fuel cell stack
• Honda FCX concept fuel cell car in depth, Pt. 2 - Styling and powertrain
• Honda FCX concept fuel cell car in depth, Pt. 3 - Construction and interior
• Honda FCX concept fuel cell car in depth, Pt. 4 - Driving at Laguna Seca

[Source: Motor Trend]

click on the image for a high-res gallery of the fuel cell E-Flex platform

In Shanghai this month, as you probably know, GM unveiled the fuel cell version of the E-Flex platform. It's also not recent news that GM wants to have 100-plus hydrogen fuel cell Equinox vehicles out for real world testing soon. And, of course, GM said in February they want to have a production version of the hydrogen-powered Sequel for sale by 2010 (in limited quantaties).

Where does all this lead us? Some would say it's likely to lead us down the road to the questionable benefits of a hydrogen economy. But from a GM-centric perspective, it's likely to lead us to a mass-produced GM hydrogen car in 2012. At least, that's what Motor Trend heard when they spoke with GM's Larry Burns (AutoblogGreen spoke with Burns in March, and you can hear the interview in our second podcast).

Burns told Motor Trend's Todd Lassa about the hydrogen future for GM, and pointed out this bit of information on how GM is looking at the hydrogen future for the rest of us:

"We did that same calculation [how many hydrogen stations would they need] for the 100 largest cities in the U.S. ... and we connected all the cities with stations on the freeway with stations every 25 miles, and that added up to 12,000 stations. Out of 170,000 total in the United States. Even if every station cost $1 million for hydrogen, that's $12 billion. The Alaskan Pipeline today would cost $25 billion. So for half the cost of the Alaskan Pipeline, you could have stations for 70 percent of the population." (See the DOE's hydrogen predictions here)

With fuel station problems partially solved for $12 billion, Burns said GM sees production engineering for high-tech, low- or no-emissions vehicles being the same as for any conventional car or truck in three to four years.

You can read the whole thing here.



[Source: Todd Lassa / Motor Trend]

A Virginia company, H2Gen, makes a hydrogen-extraction device that basically (very basically) sucks the hydrogen right out of natural gas (see the graph for a (somewhat) more detailed explanation). An Orlando Chevron station has acquired one of their units and is currently testing the viability of using it for producing hydrogen right at the point of purchase. If the test works out, one more stumbling block, transportation of hydrogen, could be removed in some cases.

As you know, from an emissions standpoint, hydrogen is one of the cleanest fuels available. Unfortunately, our most abundant source is water, and with current technology, breaking those two H atoms away from that one O atom (electrolysis) uses more energy that it creates. H2Gen claims its process is as much as six times more efficient than conventional electrolysis.

Now let's hope automakers' hydrogen programs, like BMW's test of its Hydrogen 7, work out. Then stand back and watch gasoline-powered cars go the way of the dinosaurs.

[Source: H2Daily via EvWorld]

Do you remember when we ran an article about the Shell Eco-marathon? Does the sound of 6,792 miles per gallon jog your memory? Think that's high? That can't hold a candle to the all-time record of 10,705 miles per gallon set in 2003! That kind of mileage is impressive, even if the vehicles used to record such astounding numbers are very small and can seat only one person. Not surprisingly, as you can see from some of our pictures, women are often the drivers, as they often weigh less that us guys, and every little bit helps. Here is a link to our gallery from last year, and here is a link to a sneak peek at some of the newest entrants for this years competition. We'll be sure to keep you updated as the results.

[Source: Shell and The Eureka Reporter]

Not finding a viable near-term future in solar energy, a team of Missouri University engineering students is building a hydrogen vehicle. The group had built the Suntiger VI solar car but will now focus on a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle capable of running 10 hours at 60 mph on a single tank of fuel. Team president Kenneth Keane explains: "We know the way technology is going these days and, unless there is a big breakthrough with solar technology, it's pretty impractical to continue building solar-powered cars." The MU team is only the second university to tackle a hydrogen car effort. The team currently has an $8,000 fuel cell but is looking for a second model. Visit the team's Web site for more info.

[Source: Allison Hull/Columbia Missourian]

At the recent Honda FCX event at Laguna Seca Raceway, AutoblogGreen had the opportunity to spend some time talking to Dr. Joan Ogden and Stephen Ellis. Dr. Ogden is Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis and an Associate Energy Policy Analyst and Co-Director of the Hydrogen Pathway Program at the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis). Mr. Ellis is the manager of Fuel Cell and Alternative Fuel marketing for American Honda Motor Co. We talked about what is probably the most controversial aspect of hydrogen use as a fuel, the relative environmental merits of hydrogen vs. gas and hybrid vehicles.

AutoblogGreen: During Ben Knight's (VP of Honda R&D America) presentation, he talked about the efficiency of hydrogen in terms of well to wheel and tank to wheel efficiency. What would go into that measurement?

Dr. Ogden: You start with the raw materials, a feed stock like natural gas or crude oil which come out the ground and those have to be processed and transported, in the case of crude oil you take it to a refinery. The trucks take that to the refueling stations and there is energy consumption and emissions at each step in that process. Once it's in the car, it's used there and that's well to wheel. With hydrogen, let's start with hydrogen from natural gas. At the natural gas well you take it out, process it a little bit, compress it, stick in the pipeline, and take it to the hydrogen plant. There you convert it, compress the hydrogen, and either put that in a truck or send it out by pipeline.

The discussion continues after the jump.

Winding Road, which got the scoop on the hydrogen-powered GM Chevy Sequel earlier this week, has a great follow-up post on the media battle between GM and BMW, which also announced big hydrogen car news this week. Winding Road took snapshots of various Yahoo news sites throughout the week and compared them to the headlines provided in the press releases from GM and BMW. While GM got out of the gate first with news of the Sequel, the company didn't hype the hydrogen angle enough (they instead called it "petroleum-free"). When BMW announced the Hydrogen 7 Series the next day, guess what the big news was? I recommend going over to Winding Road and reading the whole thing. They've done a great job of capturing the tangled PR web automakers and news outlets weave week after week.

Related:

• GM Sequel fuel-cell vehicle will be a Chevy
• BMW officially announces the BMW Hydrogen 7

[Source: Winding Road]