Honda fuel cell car began production of its new FCX Clarity fuel cell car on Monday. The Japanese automaker will produce about 200 Honda fuel cell car of them over the next three years. Honda would not say how many will make it to the U.S., but those that do will be leased only in Southern California.

But you have to keep in mind there is currently no infrastructure for Honda fuel cell car to fill up their “petrol”. That is hydrogen distribution pump (nowhere to “fill up”). There will be a few stations opened by the time there are cars to buy, but it will take years before they are plentiful, so these Honda fuel cell car will only be practical for a limited number of people, mainly ones who either live or work near a station. Any trip you might take will require planning to make sure there are stations along the way – so don’t be so sure you’ll want one Honda fuel cell car in the early going.

The only problem to use this Honda fuel cell car is we don’t have the infrastructure. To transport hydrogen, it needs to be pressurized, since its density is very low. And, no, it’s not easier to make hydrogen as of now. We can just dig a hole and pump out oil. For hydrogen, we have to either have to take hydrogen out of fossil fuels, (gasification) or we have to conduct electrolysis to split water molecules, which is an energy demanding and inefficient process. There’s also the slight problem of hydrogen’s tendency to go BOOM

“Honda says that although some of its hydrogen cars will go to celebrities, it will allocate the bulk of them — 200 over the next three years — to people who can’t be found in the Internet Movie Database. “The last thing we’d want is for the car to be cubby holed as something just for the rich and famous,” said Stephen Ellis, Honda’s manager of fuel cell marketing.”

“Aside from generating buzz, the automakers expect to use the loaners to gather information about the cars to refine the technology. GM’s program puts most of its vehicles in the hands of regular drivers and doesn’t charge for the loan. There’s a waiting list of about 8,000 people.”

Source(s):

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-greencar15-2008jun15,0,4145979.story

Now we discuss little bit about the technical point of view. What is Honda fuel cell car use? If you want to be technical about it, a fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device. A fuel cell converts the chemicals hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process it produces electricity.

The other electrochemical device that we are all familiar with is the battery. A battery has all of its chemicals stored inside, and it converts those chemicals into electricity too. This means that a battery eventually “goes dead” and you either throw it away or recharge it.

Now with Honda fuel cell car which use a fuel cell, chemicals constantly flow into the cell so it never goes dead — as long as there is a flow of chemicals into the cell, the electricity flows out of the cell. Most fuel cells in use today use hydrogen and oxygen as the chemicals.