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Honda backs hydrogen fuel cells over electric power [w/VIDEO]

Posted by Hootan Mahallati | August 12, 2009 | In founder's thoughts green honda videos

As Nissan and GM have a go at each other over whose yet-to-be-sold electric vehicles will be more efficient, Honda is throwing its weight behind Hydrogen fuel cells as the alternative technology of the future.

“Fuel-cell cars will become necessary,” said Takashi Moriya, head of Honda’s group developing the technology. “We’re positioning it as the ultimate zero-emission car.”

Honda, the first company to introduce hybrids to the US market with the original Insight, is also the first company to put fuel cell cars on the market here. 200 Honda Clarity FCX, built at a dedicated plant in Tochigi, Japan, will be available for lease over the next three years, predominantly in Southern California. The lease price will be $600 a month and will include maintenance costs and physical damage collision coverage.

This news made me think about the automotive alternative energy debate, on which yours truly has a few opinions.

In the early days of my automotive engineering career, the industry was consumed with the idea of fuel cell cars. DaimlerChrysler in particular promised to put thousands of such vehicles on the road by 2010, introducing one concept demonstrator after another. We are a few months from 2010 and Daimler Benz is no where near fulfilling that promise. Instead, Mercedes-Benz's parent company, late to the party, has just recently started building hybrid S-Classes and developing electric Smarts. GM and Ford, too, were spending millions on fuel cell research a few years ago, only to have seemingly shelved those plans in order to jump on the hybrid and EV bandwagon.

Fuel cells have actually been around for about a 170 years. Their downfall has always been the expensive ion-exchange membranes within the fuel cell where hydrogen and oxygen combine to create the electricity needed for the motive electric motor. In addition, even though hydrogen is the most abundant element in the world, it is not freely available and has to be extracted from other compounds, most notably the petroleum-based product Methanol. To complicate matters, hydrogen is highly flammable and needs to be stored in liquid form under high pressure. In the late 90's and early 00's, auto makers backed the idea of reforming methanol onboard to produce hydrogen, circumnavigating the issue of hydrogen storage.

However, all the above problems are solvable. No one seems to be talking about the environmental damage that will ensue from mining Lithium, the main ingredient in the Lithium-ion batteries that are quickly becoming the battery technology of choice for electric vehicles. Due to its high reactivity, Lithium, the lightest metal on earth, is found as a compound in brines, clays and pegmatite minerals in some of the world's most beautiful and ecologically fragile environments. The majority of the world's Lithium is in South America, with over half of the reserves located in Bolivia. The relatively poor countries of South America are well aware of the value of their precious, increasingly in-demand metal and are busy making mining deals with foreign governments. So there we go, a whole new way to rape the environment in the name of a so-called "clean" technology.

Extracting hydrogen from petroleum is not exactly a clean process and requires tremendous amounts of energy. However, we are already extracting oil and have built an international fueling infrastructure that can adapt to hydrogen delivery. Rather than taxing our electrical grid with plug-in electric cars that by the way, will take hours to charge, the technology already exists whereby you can pull into a gas station, fill up your car with hydrogen in a matter of 2-3 minutes, and drive on as you would a normal car. Watch the TopGear review of the Honda Clarity below.

BMW has dabbled with Hydrogen too, but its focus thus far has been on internal combustion engines powered by hydrogen as well as small fuel cells designed to power a car's auxiliary electrical needs. However, Honda is currently the lone-worlf backing what I consider a better technology, and I for one would like to see Honda vindicated for its visionary support of fuel cell cars.

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