December 09, 2007

ROAD-TEST IMPRESSIONS re Honda's new fuel-cell car, from reader Shawn Church. And he emails some further thoughts -- click "read more" to read them.

Church writes:

In particular, I think Honda is on to something with H2 fuel cells for several key reasons:

1) Transitioning in small steps - initially, wherever the H2 comes from, people will refuel their fuel cell cars much like a gasoline car. Pull up to a station, open the filler flap and put the nozzle in - 3-5 minutes later you're done and drive away. The only difference is that they'll need a hydrogen pump rather than a gasoline pump. In fact, I'd argue that in a 5-7 years, this won't be much more difficult than finding a diesel pump here in SoCal (they're rare outside of truck stops). Consumers, while not a monolithic group, generally don't like lots of changes at once. Keeping the same sort of refueling pattern will ease the transition IMO.

2) Home refueling will be an option. Honda showed us their Home Energy Station IV (HES IV) which, powered by natural gas, can produce up to 4 kW of electricity, heat for hot water and hydrogen to refuel your car. While it still uses fossil fuels, Honda claims that a household using a fuel cell car and HES IV would produce about 30% less CO2 than a household using a gasoline car and commercial electricity. I don't view this as a long term solution, but as a transitional approach, it works quite well. It doesn't tax the overworked electrical grid (especially here in SoCal) - in fact, it reduces load on said grid. And NG availability/pricing doesn't seem to be in the same pickle that oil is. Honda engineers told me that the HES IV can be tuned to use other hydrocarbon gasses like Propane, etc. as well.

3) Long term, electrolysis appears to be a strong contender. Honda claims they have already reached hydrogen production efficiency of 66% from solar powered electrolysis at their Torrance, CA facility and could theoretically reach significantly higher levels. Their current solar array is pretty large, and only produces a tankful of hydrogen a day, but it shows solid progress.

Anyways, I didn't mean to get this lengthy, but I think it behooves us to look not only at theoretical ideals, but at practical considerations. Honda claims that a pure electric car charged off the US power grid (coal based as it is) actually produces more pollution than their FCX refueled using NG reformed H2. This despite electric's higher theoretical efficiency. And the refueling time issue is still a problem, despite all the proclamations of short charging times on long life batteries just around the corner.

In the end, I expect there will be a strong market presence for both H2 and battery only cars, with H2 dominating the longer haul market (trips of over 200 miles, longer commutes, etc.) while overnight charged electrics will be used as city cars and short distance commuters. But if a family can only afford one car and needs one that can travel from LA to San Fran, or LA to Phoenix and be refueled on the way, H2 will be a better choice. And Honda's approach of going with H2 first has other benefits. All that needs to be done to convert to electric only is remove the H2 tank and install a larger battery from whoever develops the best solution (not quite _that_ easy, but I think you see my point).

Very interesting.