FIRST DRIVE: Clarity makes future of motoring NOW
IT'S UNIQUE BECAUSE IT HOLDS IT OWN ON THE ROAD
November 22, 2009
By John Simister
FIRST DRIVE: Honda's FCX Clarity on the move in California. If you're important enough, you can have one on lease for R4500 a month there. - YouTube
The Honda FCX Clarity is the first electric car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that can hold its own on the open road
This is a proper production-quality car but you can't buy one - not yet, anyway. 200 very early-adopting people will, however, be living with the Honda FCX Clarity under a leasing and research programme over the next three years.
These cars will be based in Japan and the US but two have also arrived in Europe - Germany, to be precise - and I've been driving one of them.
You see it here. It looks like a bigger version of the Honda Insight hybrid but the FCX is a lot more high-tech than that. It claims to be the world's first fully-finished, mass-produceable, fuel-cell car, the first car built by proper factory processes to use hydrogen fuel to generate electricity while emitting water vapour as the sole by-product.
We've heard a lot about fuel cell cars, although they have faded from their save-the-planet topicality while the glare of the green spotlight is turned on to pure electric vehicles and plug-in, rechargeable hybrids
That's because these last two technologies are more immediately feasible, requiring nothing more than a recharging point because the energy is actually generated elsewhere, whereas a fuel cell requires a supply of the simplest known oxidisable material in the universe, hydrogen. This is blown, with air, over the fuel cell's plates, to create electricity which powers an electric motor.
Sounds deliciously simple. The huge snag is this: where does the hydrogen come from? We'll return to that in a minute, because there are solutions. First, though, the FCX Clarity... its chief engineer, Sachito Fujimoto, is very upbeat.
"It can now be taken on the autobahn with confidence," he says. "It provides relentless acceleration at all speeds."
That makes it sound like some sort of supercar, so I try to pin down the reality. Which is that it will reach 100km/h in about nine seconds, a figure comparable to a similar-size sedan powered by a good modern turbodiesel, and it will just about reach 160km/h, which is fast enough for most purposes even on those stretches of autobahn which still lack a speed limit.
BULKY HYDROGEN TANK
As for energy efficiency, it equates to an average of 2.84 litres/100km of diesel. From raw fuel to motive power, there is nothing more effective than a fuel cell.
The FCX Clarity weighs 1625kg, a typical mass for a large sedan, and the 171 litres of compressed hydrogen in its tank will take it about 450km. That's a large, bulky tank, but to liquefy the hydrogen requires much more energy.
Coping with hydrogen which is merely compressed is the best trade-off between bulk and efficiency.
As for the fuel cell stack, this is almost miraculously compact and sits within the Clarity's central tunnel. A decade ago Honda's experimental stack occupied 134 litres of space, weighed 202kg and produced 60kW.
Today's version occupies 57 litres, weighs 67kg and produces 100kW. The final parts of the powertrain, the electric motor, its control unit, and the cooling systems, fit under the bonnet.
REFUEL? ABOUT FOUR MINUTES
I switch it on. A few hums later, a "ready to drive" message appears on the luminescent instrument panel, in the centre of which is a coloured ball. I select 'Drive', press the accelerator, and off we waft.
The "ball meter" represents the rate of hydrogen use: if it is small and green, I am being frugal, if large and amber, wasteful. Middle-size and blue is the intermediate stage. One tapering bar graph next to the ball reveals the amount of energy going back into the storage battery when slowing or braking, while its opposite number shows how much hydrogen is in the tank.
Refuelling takes about four minutes.
But here's the most extraordinary part of all. The Clarity accelerates from rest with the vigour of the most muscular turbodiesel, so it can lead the pack away from traffic lights and punch effectively out of junctions.
And it does indeed cruise with pace and authority on the open road. This car of the future works absolutely as it should, with no anxiety in its driver and no excuses required.
R4500 A MONTH ON LEASE
The motor and the fuel-cell's air pump provide a hi-tech soundtrack, the notes rising and falling as you move the accelerator, but they are far from loud which - simply emphasises how thoroughly the engineers have eradicated the rush of the wind and the rumble of tyres on the road.
The Clarity steers precisely, it soaks up bumps, it feels unexpectedly nimble, and if I was told I had to drive such a car from this point onwards I would not be unhappy.
Honda charges its US customers about R4500 a month to lease a Clarity for three years. That comes nowhere near covering the project's costs but that's not the point; rather, it is to find out how these cars will fare in the real world.
The trouble is that the real world currently lacks a proper hydrogen-supply infrastructure, as current supplies are simply by-products of other chemical processes such as making chlorine.
Long-term, the gas will have to come from the electrolysis of water, powered by renewable energy sources or nuclear power.
And time is running out. - The Independent, London
|
INTO THE FUTURE: Jamie Lee Curtis and her Honda FCX Clarity fuel-cell car at a hydrogen filling station in Torrance, California. She got one of the first of the leaseable cars. |
By John Simister
FIRST DRIVE: Honda's FCX Clarity on the move in California. If you're important enough, you can have one on lease for R4500 a month there. - YouTube
The Honda FCX Clarity is the first electric car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that can hold its own on the open road
The FCX is a lot more high-tech than the honda Insight
.This is a proper production-quality car but you can't buy one - not yet, anyway. 200 very early-adopting people will, however, be living with the Honda FCX Clarity under a leasing and research programme over the next three years.
These cars will be based in Japan and the US but two have also arrived in Europe - Germany, to be precise - and I've been driving one of them.
You see it here. It looks like a bigger version of the Honda Insight hybrid but the FCX is a lot more high-tech than that. It claims to be the world's first fully-finished, mass-produceable, fuel-cell car, the first car built by proper factory processes to use hydrogen fuel to generate electricity while emitting water vapour as the sole by-product.
We've heard a lot about fuel cell cars, although they have faded from their save-the-planet topicality while the glare of the green spotlight is turned on to pure electric vehicles and plug-in, rechargeable hybrids
Huge snag: Where does the hydrogen come from?
.That's because these last two technologies are more immediately feasible, requiring nothing more than a recharging point because the energy is actually generated elsewhere, whereas a fuel cell requires a supply of the simplest known oxidisable material in the universe, hydrogen. This is blown, with air, over the fuel cell's plates, to create electricity which powers an electric motor.
Sounds deliciously simple. The huge snag is this: where does the hydrogen come from? We'll return to that in a minute, because there are solutions. First, though, the FCX Clarity... its chief engineer, Sachito Fujimoto, is very upbeat.
"It can now be taken on the autobahn with confidence," he says. "It provides relentless acceleration at all speeds."
That makes it sound like some sort of supercar, so I try to pin down the reality. Which is that it will reach 100km/h in about nine seconds, a figure comparable to a similar-size sedan powered by a good modern turbodiesel, and it will just about reach 160km/h, which is fast enough for most purposes even on those stretches of autobahn which still lack a speed limit.
BULKY HYDROGEN TANK
As for energy efficiency, it equates to an average of 2.84 litres/100km of diesel. From raw fuel to motive power, there is nothing more effective than a fuel cell.
The FCX Clarity weighs 1625kg, a typical mass for a large sedan, and the 171 litres of compressed hydrogen in its tank will take it about 450km. That's a large, bulky tank, but to liquefy the hydrogen requires much more energy.
Coping with hydrogen which is merely compressed is the best trade-off between bulk and efficiency.
As for the fuel cell stack, this is almost miraculously compact and sits within the Clarity's central tunnel. A decade ago Honda's experimental stack occupied 134 litres of space, weighed 202kg and produced 60kW.
Today's version occupies 57 litres, weighs 67kg and produces 100kW. The final parts of the powertrain, the electric motor, its control unit, and the cooling systems, fit under the bonnet.
REFUEL? ABOUT FOUR MINUTES
I switch it on. A few hums later, a "ready to drive" message appears on the luminescent instrument panel, in the centre of which is a coloured ball. I select 'Drive', press the accelerator, and off we waft.
The "ball meter" represents the rate of hydrogen use: if it is small and green, I am being frugal, if large and amber, wasteful. Middle-size and blue is the intermediate stage. One tapering bar graph next to the ball reveals the amount of energy going back into the storage battery when slowing or braking, while its opposite number shows how much hydrogen is in the tank.
Refuelling takes about four minutes.
But here's the most extraordinary part of all. The Clarity accelerates from rest with the vigour of the most muscular turbodiesel, so it can lead the pack away from traffic lights and punch effectively out of junctions.
And it does indeed cruise with pace and authority on the open road. This car of the future works absolutely as it should, with no anxiety in its driver and no excuses required.
R4500 A MONTH ON LEASE
The motor and the fuel-cell's air pump provide a hi-tech soundtrack, the notes rising and falling as you move the accelerator, but they are far from loud which - simply emphasises how thoroughly the engineers have eradicated the rush of the wind and the rumble of tyres on the road.
The Clarity steers precisely, it soaks up bumps, it feels unexpectedly nimble, and if I was told I had to drive such a car from this point onwards I would not be unhappy.
Honda charges its US customers about R4500 a month to lease a Clarity for three years. That comes nowhere near covering the project's costs but that's not the point; rather, it is to find out how these cars will fare in the real world.
The trouble is that the real world currently lacks a proper hydrogen-supply infrastructure, as current supplies are simply by-products of other chemical processes such as making chlorine.
Long-term, the gas will have to come from the electrolysis of water, powered by renewable energy sources or nuclear power.
And time is running out. - The Independent, London
Free NEWSLETTER
DON'T GO BALLS TO THE WALL: The Honda FCX Clarity has a speedometer but other dials might be strange - such as the ball-meter which displays a small green ball for economical driving, a bigger blue one for being silly and an even bigger one, in orange, for sucking dry your hydrogen reservoir.
CLEAN GREEN LINES: Being green doesn't mean having to be ugly - the Honda FCX Clarity must be one of the most stunning cars on Earth.
STEAM, CLEANER: You can't see an exhaust pipe but, if you could, it would be emitting only water vapour from the Honda FCX Clarity's fuel-cell.
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