Fuel-cell cars have an exciting future
We’ll never get this special Honda in New Zealand. Or will we?
Rob Maetzig reports on Honda’s journey towards electric motoring.
Iwant a hydrogen fuel-cell car. They’re so cool – when you put your foot down they rocket off in a futuristic whirring sort of way, with maybe a hint of a gurgle as the fuel-cell technology works its magic and converts hydrogen into electricity, with water the only stuff coming out of the tailpipe.
Unfortunately there’s not much point owning a fuel-cell vehicle (FCV) in New Zealand, because there’s nowhere to go to fill it up with hydrogen.
That’s a pity, because the way I see it there’s massive potential for FCVs to be an integral – and totally green – part of New Zealand’s future passenger vehicle mix.
It’s all to do with how we generate our electricity. These days it is generally considered that the best way to make hydrogen fuel is to use an electrolysis process that splits electricity into hydrogen and oxygen. And if the electricity is being generated in a renewable way, then the hydrogen can be considered renewable as well.
In New Zealand, 85 per cent of our electricity is generated using renewables such as hydro, wind and geothermal energy – and that’s going to move closer to 90 per cent once the Huntly power station stops using coal from 2020.
So in New Zealand, an FCV could be a green car. But all this leads to an obvious question: Why use electricity to create the hydrogen to create the electricity that runs a fuel-cell vehicle? Why not just run an electric car?
The answer is that there are some crucial advantages in operating an electric car the fuelcell way. One is that an FCV can be refuelled with hydrogen in minutes – you simply pull up at a refuelling station and fill ‘er up just like petrol and diesel. The second crucial advantage is that currently hydrogen fuel-cell cars have far greater range than electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.
And that explains why some big motor industry players are continuing to spend millions developing fuel-cell vehicle technology. They include BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai, who have formed a lobby group to convince governments around the world to assist in setting up hydrogen refuelling infrastructure.
has just been in Japan as a guest of Honda, to get a first-hand look at the company’s efforts to ‘‘green’’ its vehicle fleet. Under its Vision 2030 strategy, Honda wants 65 per cent of its global vehicle sales by 2030 to be electrified. It’s a pragmatic sort of goal too, because of that 65 per cent, Honda envisages that 50 per cent of the electrified Hondas will be the nownormal hybrids and plug-in hybrids, with the remaining 15 per cent battery electric vehicles and fuel-cell vehicles.
At this stage then, FCVs represent only a minute portion of Honda’s electrification plans. But many experts consider hydrogen fuel-cells as the passenger vehicle powertrain method with the strongest long-term future - and that’s why the car companies are persisting with FCV research and development.
Honda has been involved in fuel-cell development for more than 20 years, and it has made huge progress - the company has moved from early models that carried vault-sized fuel stacks, to a situation today where both the fuel stacks and the electric motor can fit inside a standard vehicle engine bay.
It launched its first production vehicle, the FCX Clarity, in 2008 and began leasing it in the United States, Japan and Europe that year. But while the exercise was technologically important it was very small stuff – by the time production stopped in 2014 only a few dozen of the Claritys had been leased in the US, with a lack of hydrogen filling stations the major stumbling block.
Now Honda has a new Clarity, and this time it is being offered as a battery EV, a plug-in hybrid, and as an FCV. The company’s strategy behind this model mix is that it offers the best of all worlds – the EV is ideal for short-range urban work, the PHEV good for short commutes with the occasional long trip, and the FCV is best for long-range driving. The trio of Claritys are already available for lease in the US, and they are about to be launched in right-hand drive form in Japan.
During our Japan visit we were able to drive the PHEV and FCV versions of the Clarity. The car is a medium-sized sedan with good interior space, and while the exterior design is a little eco-car futuristic particularly around the rear wheel arches, the Honda looks standard enough.
The PHEV model feels standard enough too, which is good news as this is the technology that will play the primary role in Honda’s electrification plans. As we whistled around a handling circuit at Honda’s Twin Ring Motegi motorsport facility in the hills north of Tokyo, the car felt good in a Honda Accord sort of way.
Things felt a little different in the fuel-cell model. It’s heavier thanks to the fact it has two fuel tanks, a fuel stack plus an electric motor, but it feels more secure. And performance is very good – not only does it boast a range of more than 700km, but it drives well. We did one circuit in a cruisy sort of way before our instructor told us to floor the accelerator so we could experience impressively sharp performance.
Just to underline all of that, we were then invited to join a professional driver in a strippedout version of the Clarity FCV, who absolutely caned it around the circuit. Hydrogen-fuelled cars used to have a reputation for rather sluggish performance – that’s obviously certainly not the case now.
And here’s something interesting: As we wandered away from the track, we spotted a Clarity FCV helping make a cup of coffee. It was attached to a piece of Honda equipment called a Power Exporter, which was using the electricity generated by the car to power a coffee perculator.
A Honda engineer told us it costs about $60 to fill up a Clarity with hydrogen, and that’s sufficient to allow the Power Exporter to run an appliance such as a household air conditioning unit for up to seven days.
The Power Exporter costs around $13,000 to buy, but already a number of them have been sold to such organisations as local authorities, who see it as ideal for disaster management use. Presumably you’d have to lease a Clarity as well - but hey, what a useful fleet car it would be.
Obviously the big question is whether hydrogen fuel-cell cars such as the Honda Clarity will ever make it to New Zealand. It would be a big call, simply because of a lack of suitable infrastructure in the short term, and the cost of setting up the infrastructure in the longer term - it would be far more expensive setting up hydrogen fuelling stations than, say, electric charging points.
But in the longer term, it may happen. And if it does, it might help shut up Tesla boss Elon Musk, who has been famously reported as describing fuel-cell technology for vehicles as ‘‘incredibly dumb’’. The progress being achieved shows that’s not necessarily the case.