Thursday 9th April 2009

The Honda FCX Clarity, a four-door saloon billed as the planet’s first hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle intended for mass production, won the World Green Car award at the New York Auto Show. The first FCX Clarity cars came off the line at Honda’s plant in Takanezawa, Japan, in June 2008. As The New York Times reported at the time: “Fuel-cell vehicles have been a sort of holy grail of the auto industry, offering the promise of driving without emitting air-polluting exhaust. Fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen from ordinary air to make electricity, in a process whose only by-products are water and heat.” The FCX Clarity is currently available for lease in the U.S., Japan and Europe. In the U.S., it is only available to customers who live in Southern California where “fast-fill” hydrogen stations are available. As of 2010, 20 FCX Clarity were leased for $600 a month which included collision coverage, maintenance, roadside assistance and hydrogen fuel. There are around 10 others on lease in Japan and another 10 in Europe. The number of fuel cell vehicles Honda can put on the road is significantly limited by the number of hydrogen stations the company can use. According to Honda, which reportedly spent more than 15 years and millions of dollars developing its fuel-cell technology, the FCX Clarity is more fuel-efficient than a gas-powered car or hybrid and gets 74 miles per gallon of fuel. The Times also noted that fuel-cell vehicles such as the FCX Clarity are more eco-friendly than an electric car “whose batteries take hours to recharge and use electricity, which, in the case of the U.S.A., China and many other countries, is often produced by coal-burning power plants.”