Honda's FCX Fuel Cell: Production in 2008?
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 09.13.07
Ever since we first saw Honda's FCX fuel cell concept, we've been dreaming of the day that it would finally enter production and hit the streets. They've told the world to wait a few years for production and have been teasing us by intermittently showing it off; now the latest word on the street is: limited production in Japan and the US in 2008. Hey, that's next year!
Wallpaper* magazine, of all places (if it's in there, it's gotta be cool) tells us that, "Honda hopes that with a little helping hand from legislation, plus their ongoing experiments into a viable 'Home Energy Station', the FCX Concept will finally make it to the American and Japanese markets - albeit in a heavily subsided, quasi-experimental form - in 2008." Whether or not hydrogen cars are a viable personal transportation option is sort of another story. Check out Honda's concept site for more, and keep your fingers crossed. ::Honda FCX via ::Wallpaper.com
What about GM's Volt and Fuel Cell concepts, in which they claim they will have full production of Fuel Cells by 2010. Can an American company get a break.
Hydrogen power for cars, as I understand it, can take two forms.
1. Fuel cell generates electricity w/o any moving pars.
2. Hydrogen as a gas (stored compressed) enters an ICE
Of the two, the most promising of course is a full EV with some batteries or capacitors for storing breaking / slowing down energy temporarily.
With X number of fuel cell cartridges, you have some "charged" in your car, the spent ones, filled with pure water and being recharged at home from a Utility, Solar, Wind.
Someone had commented on how using water to obtain hydrogen, will deplete water eventually, as it is finite.
With the quantity available, and the fact that water is produced in the explosion, the total loss is quite tiny.
Anyone know what the environmental cost of producing a large fuel cell for a EV car is? I would assume it's much higher than the Prius HV NiMH battery everyone is so fond of bashing.
I remember there was a time when gasoline fuel cells were the next big thing. What happened?
They promised lower emissions than burning the gasoline and much higher mpg due to the greatly increased efficiency.
In other words, all the thing a hydrogen fuel cell offers except with a readily available fuel and a fuel that is actually an energy source and not an energy storage medium.
Fuel cells are fairly cheap to produce. They aren't the real problem. The problem is that hydrogen production needs natural gas and/or nuclear power, as well as a lot of water (on the site, regardless of the fact that it is re-emitted as vapor).
Home generation has the same basic problems a battery EV does. Limited range, inconvenience, and either A) power coming from coal or nuclear station, or B) cost and unreliability of home solar. This coupled with the problems of storage (leaking, flammability), you have a no-go.
I give a small (5-10%) chance that direct solar production with TiO2 catalyst could work on a large scale, eliminating the problems of both hydrolysis and steam cracking.
The problem is that hydrogen production needs natural gas and/or nuclear power,
Wind + Water = Hydrogen + Oxygen
yeah, I'm still waiting for the MDI Air car. 80km/h 300km/charge and a negative pollution coefficient to boot.
last I read, they were shipping some to South Africa to be tested as taxis