"Hydrogen fuel cell cars could be on the road much earlier than the decade or more so far predicted. Honda has confirmed it plans a production model “in three to four years”. The car will be based on the FCX Concept, unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show last year. "

Source: The Sunday Times

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Sweet!

Now we're getting somewhere!

That is going to be the ONLY way we can get hydrogen vehicles on the road... to let people fuel at home, work, or in the neighborhood using natural gas, electrolysis, or whatever. No need to truck or pipe it to stations, using more energy. Make the fuel where it will be used!

Also, it's a good solution to the "But there's no infrastructure!" argument/catch 22 ("there's no demand for the infrastructure... because there's no place to fill up... because there's no demand...etc).

What I'd like to know is, how would that vehicle store hydrogen on-board? I'll have to go to some more reading on this. Is any info available on the Honda website?
--A

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I wonder what the Japanese word is for 'unobtainium'?

When I see fuel cell batteries for laptops at the local computer store, I'll believe it is possible. But to think anyone would go for a car instead of laptops . . .

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Good point.

However, this is Honda that we're talking about. NOT GM !

Sure they can goof up, but... So far, this once little company has managed to become the largest engine manufacturer in the world (by engineering excellence and technical achievement) and they often bring to market many of their concepts. I certainly don't doubt Honda (or Toyota) at all.
Honda has been earning my respect and that of every market they've entered since their VERY humble beginnings.

If it was GM, Ford or Chrysler ... Then I too, would bet $5.

Regards;

MS

So... How come concept cars always have funky swooping windshields?

But seriously.... If any company can make a viable fuel cell vehicle in under ten years, it'll either be Honda or Toyota.

If GM is still around in 10 years, they will still be churning out SUV land yachts that get 9 MPG and fall apart after 70,000 miles.

Isn't that what they're doing already? I think in ten years they'll have to be giving away timeshares with their cars (in addition to 0% finance, employee pricing, and down payment assistance)

LOL,

However, I think GM has been getting better in the last 20 years. Not good enough, but better nevertheless. I seriously hope they take a page from the Japanese in humility, hard work and forward-looking GLOBAL excellence. Maybe then, I'll be able to add them to my future car shopping list. Heck, even Hyundai could offer GM a text book example on how to turn things around.

Back to the original topic - I would definitely be a buyer of this technology if it ever made it to our shores in 3 or 4 years.

Regards;

MS

I agree the home fueling may be critical to getting hydrogen off the ground. Curious what the cost of converting natural gas will be. My general understanding though is it takes quite a lot of tank storage space for the hydrogen and the effective range may be in the 150-200 mile area. Fabulous for commuting until hygrogen's more readily available.

Cool stuff.

I wonder what the efficiency benefit will be, if any, of converting the natural gas to hydrogen and driving a fuel-cell car, compared to running a natural gas vehicle with the same amount of gas?

The problem with fuel cell laptops would be scaling the fuel cells to a small enough size to be effective against lithium ion. Refilling would be effectively impossible, compared ot simply plugging it in overnight, and the cost of dong so is negligible. Even if the fuel cell provides longer running-time, it would still probably be cheaper to just carry a spare battery.

However, I think that fuel cell cars will have stiff competition to try to be more efficienct/cost effective than a decent plug-in hybrid vehicle.

Probably to reduce aerodynamic drag. However, that much glass surface-area would make for an extremely hot vehicle in the summer, and the extra air-conditioning load would probably offset a lot of the aero benefit.