Honda Fuel Cell Concept with Home H2 Refueling

It doesn't come easy writes "Honda unveiled their next generation FCX fuel cell concept car, along with a home hydrogen generation filling station, at the Tokyo Motor Show this week. The car has a range of 350 miles (560 kms) using two separate 350 psi hydrogen storage tanks. The tanks use a newly-developed hydrogen absorption material that doubles their capacity without raising the required storage pressure and thus allows the concept vehicle to exceed the DOE's targeted driving range for hydrogen powered vehicles. The home refueling station uses natural gas to produce electricity, heat and hydrogen. Honda estimates that the HES system [will] lower by 50% the total running cost of household electricity, gas and vehicle fuel. As the FCX is a concept car, no mention of when the technology might be introduced in a real automobile or what it will eventually cost, but the advances demonstrated by the car are quite amazing."

Comments

Re:My ideal car!

[zorkmid]

Get a VW Jetta Turbo Diesel (TDI). My 2003 model gets ~53MPG running on BioDiesel.

Re:Wait wait wait...

[ReverendLoki]

At least in my area of the midwest US, there are lots of natural gas pockets in the ground, and the average person can, local regulations not withstanding, drop a small well and have an ample supply. All it takes is a simple filter system to make it useable. So, for some of us anyways, this is a potential boon. If I'm not mistaken, the number of people who can drop an oil rig and a refinery plant in ther backyard is a lot less...

Still, for the rest of the population, this is just moving from one type of scarce fossil fuel to another. We've all heard about the gasoline substites (ethanol, corn and soy based fuels, greasel, what have you), but is there much R&D on synthetic or renewable natural gas substitutes?

Re:My ideal car! - Your missing the point of HP.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want is a electric/diesel car. Something more along the lines of 200hp and 50+mpg! While the newer Prius, Civic, etc hybrids are nice and all they are just way too underpowered. By swapping out the gas engine with a diesel one you can get better gas mileage AND better performance.

So tell me again why you want 200hp? 200hp has no intrisic value, it can only be used to accelerate you faster or to give you higher top speed. Most of these cars can do 80 or 100mph (unless they are computer limited), so lets talk acceleration.

Cars with internal combustion engines need all that power since these engines have very low toque at low RPMs, so need to rev up, then shift, and shift again, to keep the torque on. The beauty of electric motors is that they have max torque at 0 rpm. When you are accelerating from 0 with your 200hp pocket rocket, you are actually only using a fraction of that horsepower. Of course if you have a 300hp engine, that fraction is higher, but you are not really using all 300 horses.

Back when GM was promoting the EV1, I drove one at a demo event at Caltech. Those things were rockets off the line. The computer kicked in at 30 mph and limited acceleration to reduce energy consumption. They found that people were racing around town and getting very low distance between charges. But from 0-30, the EV1 would easily beat a 300Z.

So what you really want is to either hack the computer to not limit your acceleration, or perhaps a larger electric motor or higher current draw capability. But a 200hp diesel would be a complete waste, expensive, heavy, and slow.