Honda FCX Clarity: Car of the century?

In another part of the world, Honda launched what Andrew English thinks is the most significant car of the year, the FCX Clarity

Honda did two significant things this week. The first was to hire Ross Brawn, the mastermind behind Michael Schumacher's Ferrari success, for its sickly F1 team. The second was to launch perhaps the most important car of this century.

	Clarity of thought: Honda launches its pioneering hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle

The FCX Clarity (né FCX Concept) is the world's first production hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle. It will be leased out next summer to selected customers in Los Angeles. Apart from the ability to afford the $600 (£300) monthly payments over the three-year lease period, they will have to live near one of the five hydrogen filling stations in the greater LA/Orange County area and be willing to drive the FCX every day.

"We are looking for real people and a range of driving patterns," says Ben Knight, Honda's vice president of research and development in the US. The FCX waiting list is said to be long and to contain many celebrities wanting to nail their colours to the fuel-cell mast.

Some of you might wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, Honda leased out its previous fuel-cell model (also called FCX) for $500 a month including fuel, to government institutions in Japan and LA. We drove the model leased to LA's City Hall four years ago (Motoring, June 21 2003). We have also driven its successor, the FCX Concept, which first appeared at the Tokyo show two years ago and forms the basis of this car (Motoring, November 25 2006 and July 7 2007).

Apart from forking out 100 bucks more per month and paying for their own fuel at about $4.99 per kilogram (the FCX is said to deliver an energy equivalent fuel consumption of about 81 imperial mpg), FCX Clarity customers will get to drive one of the finest looking advanced concepts on the planet. Sadly there are no plans to bring it to Europe at present as there is no significant hydrogen refuelling infrastructure over here.

Senior chief engineer Sachito Fujimoto has achieved the amazing feat of reducing the kerb weight from the carbon-fibre bodied FCX Concept's 1,680kg to the steel-bodied production car's 1,625kg. His team has also tweaked the electric motor to produce 134hp (100kW) - the Concept gave 127hp (95kW). The range is 270 miles, with a top speed of 100mph and 0-60mph in 10 seconds.

Honda claims the entire driveline of fuel cell, motor, humidifier, inverter, 4.01kg (171-litre) hydrogen tank and lithium-ion battery pack is 45 per cent smaller than before, and no bigger than that of a full hybrid. Its V-flow fuel cell remains largely untouched, although more detail was revealed about the stamped metal separators, which divide the electricity-generating cells from each other and carry air, hydrogen and coolant through the cell. They are stamped with special wavy indentations, which direct the hydrogen and air over a greater distance as they pass through. This also reduces the need for cooling every cell individually and as a result the length of the cell has been cut by 20-30 per cent.

"When you drive the FCX Clarity in town, it is such a fun car," says Fujimoto. "It's the kind of car you want to drive more, but the only emission is water. This is a car to create history for the next 100 years." We managed to get behind the wheel briefly this week. On the road, the noise reduction improvements are immediately apparent. Compressor whine is reduced to below that of the air-conditioning. You can feel the extra kick of the motor, too, particularly in fast getaways. The bio-fabric interior is less nasty than in the concept but we're still not sure whether Californians will embrace this car. We are conducting a more in-depth drive as you read this and will give a detailed report in next week's Motoring.

The cockpit heralds a driving revolution

All the testing for US homologation has been done, including a crash test, and Honda is now waiting for the paperwork to allow it to make the FCX commercially available.

Of course there are still huge problems with hydrogen technology, not least the fuel supply, which is set to improve only slowly. Honda expects about 16 refuelling stations in greater LA by 2010. Its rival GM, whose E-Flex electric driveline can use a fuel cell as a primary energy source, reckons there'll be a few more.

GM's fuel cell commercialisation manager, Britta Gross, says "destination corridors" are the aim. "We could make this happen with 40 refuelling stations at $5 million each in and around LA, and that's coffee and doughnut money." Another problem is that the hydrogen is still steamed out of natural gas, although Honda's Ben Knight says that in well-to-wheels CO2 efficiency terms, the FCX Clarity is on a par with a battery car using electricity generated from burning natural gas (as it mainly is in California) and much better than the same car using out-of-state electricity, which is 54 per cent generated by burning coal.

Honda quoted Eleanor Roosevelt: "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." And Anatole France: "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." Former CEO and "Supreme Advisor" to the company, Nobuhiko Kawamoto, did all of those things when he authorised Honda's first research into automotive fuel cells in 1986, even more so when he split the company's F1 budget in two, giving half to the fuel-cell development team. Today he thinks Honda shouldn't be involved in F1 and should be putting all its research funds into the much more important race for the lead in fuel-cells. I think he's right; of the two significant things Honda did this week, the FCX is by far the more important for us all.

Sorry about that, Mr Brawn.