Honda Clarity - Hydrogen Car.

Green Hornet

Anybody see the Hydrogen car last night on Top Gear?

Honda Clarity - 136 BHP, 0-60 in 9 secs, fill up in a few seconds and the exhaust emissions are water. One moving part in the engine.

Looks like a normal car too.

Pretty cool!

Plug

What it burns is pretty much rocket fuel. Lets just say that if you crashed it there will be trouble:D The one moving part in the engine is just a shaft, its an electic motor. The cells just power it.

View Profile

Yeah people sure has hell won't be smoking around those hydrogen pumps!

Guy:Incognito

He said it cost the same per litre for hydrogen as petrol, but only gave the range as 250 miles for a tank. That needs to be drastically improved.

Green Hornet

Plug wrote: »

What it burns is pretty much rocket fuel. Lets just say that if you crashed it there will be trouble:D

I suppose the same could be said for a car that runs on gas? The tank is constructed so that it wont explode in a collision. Wont be the first to try it out though .

I suppose it sounds like the way forward rather than the traditional electric cars which take their energy from the power stations. Heh heh, forgot that the power to condense the hydrogen must come from somewhere.....I wonder where............

L-M

I was too impressed by the above stated of 250 miles per tank. They didn't give prices either. It was 3 minutes or something to fill up, not a few seconds.

I wouldn't want dogs licking my exhaust either:P

pburns

James May seemed pretty impressed. He's the most cerebral of the TG guys of course, JC would have been sneering at the bland looks and so-so power.

He didn't mention any of the downsides though - the need for hydrogen infastructure roll out, cost of producing hydrogen, safety etc.

Overall I was very impressed though. Way more promising than hybrids or plug-in electrics.

The Tesler failed to impress - weight, handling, (un)reliability - it's the new Prius for prtetentious Hollywood do-gooders...

NewApproach

The thought of all the crappy drivers on our roads driving around in mini H-Bombs does make me a little nervous to tell you the truth.

Guy:Incognito

pburns wrote: »

James May seemed pretty impressed....

In a "this is the same as any other car" kind of way. At the end of the day the only difference is you'll be stopping more often to fill up.

towel401

The fuel cells themselves don't last very long at all. and it still has to use a lithium ion battery as a buffer. Lithium ion batteries only last for about 500 charges before their capacity starts to go way down

CianRyan

Gotta remember lads, this is the first of a bunch.
Do you remember the first mobile phones? and now look at what we've got.
Point i'm making is, the first of anything is never amazing, but in ten years time, they will be doing a great deal of good for the earth.

I wonder if i could drink out of the exaust... :rolleyes:

Green Hornet

CianRyan wrote: »

Gotta remember lads, this is the first of a bunch.
Do you remember the first mobile phones? and now look at what we've got.

Exactly. I think it shows great promise. Normal looks, normal power and the waste is water.

Del2005

It's all good and it works but we won't see them till nuclear fusion is sorted out, or some other form of clean reliable and plentiful energy source is found. It takes lots energy to make hydrogen in quantities to run the worlds, or even ours, motoring fleet.

I remember Iceland was looking to replace all it's fossil fuels with hydrogen, they have loads of free geo thermal energy, but I don't know how they are doing now their economy has collapsed.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/23/2144774.htm

E92

I'm far more excited about the BMW Hydrogen7 to be honest.

BMW's idea is to get a standard petrol engine to run on Hydrogen, meaning we can have all the best bits of petrol engines, the noise, power, a proper manual gearbox etc but none of the drawbacks:)! So you can floor it all day and hear V8 growls, 4 pot screams, straight 6 snarls whatever you want, and no environmental damage will be done whatsoever:D! And if you're in an area that doesn't have Hydrogen, then just fill it up with petrol instead as it's a dual fuel engine;)!

Even better is the fact that because hydrogen cannot produce as much power as petrol means that we will have to go back to bigger engines that have more cylinders:P!

As the Americans say - there's no replacement for displacement:D!

Having said that the Honda is the best non fossil fuel car out there by a country mile.

Who says the future of the car is dull?

I, for one think that in 10-15 years time when alternative fuels like Hydrogen will undoubtedly will have come on by leaps and bounds compared to today, that we can go back and choose large, powerful engines with lots of cylinders, and with the environmental question out of the way, nobody can say boo to you for having an M Power Hydrogen car, or a Hydrogen powered V12 Ferrari or whatever you want:)!

towel401

E92 wrote: »

I'm far more excited about the BMW Hydrogen7 to be honest.

BMW's idea is to get a standard petrol engine to run on Hydrogen, meaning we can have all the best bits of petrol engines, the noise, power, a proper manual gearbox etc but none of the drawbacks:)! So you can floor it all day and hear V8 growls, 4 pot screams, straight 6 snarls whatever you want, and no environmental damage will be done whatsoever:D! And if you're in an area that doesn't have Hydrogen, then just fill it up with petrol instead as it's a dual fuel engine;)!

much better than messing around with fuel cells and batteries that break after a few hours of use. i remember seeing real oldskool plans for a hydrogen turbine on the interweb somewhere but it was never built

Tipsy Mac

The "cost" is the same as petrol in the US, however if it was in Ireland and tax added it would work out alot more than we are currently paying, possibly twice as much. Wonder will they run marked hydrogen here to stop people lashing in cheap stuff

testicle

towel401 wrote: »

Lithium ion batteries only last for about 500 charges before their capacity starts to go way down

Are you confusing the memory effect of Ni-Cad batteries with Li-Ion ?

towel401

testicle wrote: »

Are you confusing the memory effect of Ni-Cad batteries with Li-Ion ?

nope. ordinary lithium ion batteries

Mr.David

Stekelly wrote: »

He said it cost the same per litre for hydrogen as petrol

Is it not heavily subsidised to make it affordable?

Personally I thought the report was a load of crap and bordering on irresponsible. I will happily wager with anyone that Hydrogen is not the future of the automotive industry. There are too many fundamental flaws in the process which need a lot more than evolution/ironing out to sort.

As mentioned, storing it in a liquid/compressed gas state is very dangerous. Also, it takes a lot of energy to compress the H2 into this state (and this power comes from????)

Finally, most crucially we cannot produce H2 in an efficient manner. May glossed over this little chestnut, claiming it to be something we would sort out if we really put our minds to it. Well it isnt, I mean some of the finest minds have been mulling this over for the past 20 years. The potential gains of H2 are nothing new. If it was that easy it would have been implemented.

Consider this:

"Furthermore, steam reformation of natural gas is far from a zero-emissions solution, undermining the whole rationale of hydrogen cars in the first place. According to America’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, producing a kilogram of hydrogen by steam reformation generates emissions equivalent to 11.9kg of CO2. Given that the Chevy Equinox fuel-cell vehicle can travel 39 miles on a kilogram of hydrogen, and the FCX Clarity can travel 68 miles, powering these cars using hydrogen produced by steam reformation would result in emissions of 305 and 175 grams of CO2 per mile respectively. By comparison, today’s petrol-electric Toyota Prius hybrid produces tailpipe emissions of around 167 grams per mile, and many small petrol cars achieve similar results."

:eek:

Rovi

This all looks wonderful on the face of it but until they come up with a 'low emissions' way of producing the hydrogen, it's only a nice academic exercise.

I'm also leery of the 'liquefied and compressed' bit.

Hydrogen burns with a 'pop', if I remember my chemistry classes correctly-

daveharnett

On the production front, hydrogen can be produced very cleanly from electricity through electrolysis. This can be done in lab conditions with 85% efficiency. They say that they can reach 75% efficiency on an industrial scale by 2010. Of course, that depends on clean electricity, which is tricky if you're not Norway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/quantumsphere-n.html

There are also some more sci-fi alternative sources of hydrogen: http://www.physorg.com/news114172068.html

Mr.David

daveharnett wrote: »

On the production front, hydrogen can be produced very cleanly from electricity through electrolysis. This can be done in lab conditions with 85% efficiency. They say that they can reach 75% efficiency on an industrial scale by 2010. Of course, that depends on clean electricity, which is tricky if you're not Norway.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/quantumsphere-n.html

There are also some more sci-fi alternative sources of hydrogen: http://www.physorg.com/news114172068.html

Ok assume 75% efficiency.

Suppose the power used to create this H2 comes from a typical hydrocarbon burning plant running at 35% efficiency.

So after converting to H2 you are left with 35 x .75 = 26% of the original energy contained in the hydrocarbon.

Then, the H2 has to be compressed/liquified (which is very heavy on power), transported (again more energy) and stored.

So by the end of the chain, the efficiency of the process as a whole is very poor.

Plus its dangerous.

Supercapacitors are the way forward......

testicle

H2 ? You mean H

Mr.David

testicle wrote: »

H2 ? You mean H

Ya well H is hydrogen but it will exist as H2.......if I remember my chemistry correctly! (I may not!)

Alun

testicle wrote: »

H2 ? You mean H

Nope. Hydrogen gas exists as H2 aka dihydrogen. It's more stable that way.

Slig

The one thing I picked up out of that was a huge increase in running costs if Hydrogen is the same price as petrol and a full tank only does 280miles

E92

Mr.David wrote: »

Consider this:

"Furthermore, steam reformation of natural gas is far from a zero-emissions solution, undermining the whole rationale of hydrogen cars in the first place. According to America’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, producing a kilogram of hydrogen by steam reformation generates emissions equivalent to 11.9kg of CO2. Given that the Chevy Equinox fuel-cell vehicle can travel 39 miles on a kilogram of hydrogen, and the FCX Clarity can travel 68 miles, powering these cars using hydrogen produced by steam reformation would result in emissions of 305 and 175 grams of CO2 per mile respectively. By comparison, today’s petrol-electric Toyota Prius hybrid produces tailpipe emissions of around 167 grams per mile, and many small petrol cars achieve similar results."

:eek:

That report is stunningly inaccurate.

First of all, the Prius can only just about match a standard diesel car similar in size to the Prius for mpg.

So you can be 100% sure that it does a LOT more than 167 g/mile; which conveniently enough converts to 104 g/km and even more conveniently just so happens to be what the EU says the Smug aka Pious sorry I mean Prius does so that means they are using an EU test and applying it to the US.

The US tests are much more realistic of real world tests seeing as they were recently updated following complaints by Americans that hybrids cannot achieve the quoted mpg figures(well that and the fact they needed to be updated anyway) and they found that the Pious/Smug/Prius does I think it was 12 mpg less under the new system.

You might say that other cars dropped their mpg as well and I'm being biased because I'm against hybrids and I especially hate the Pious/Smug/Prius and that's fair enough, and yes other cars, in fact pretty much every car had their mpg ratings downgraded - but and it's a big but - nothing had their mpg ratings downgraded the way the Prius had - either numbers wise or percentage wise.

So now that we have debunked the myth that the Prius does 167 g/mile, which it just doesn't, it the real world it only does 45 mpg, you will soon be able to do that in a standard Toyota Auris 1.33 petrol(which actually averages 48.7 mpg) never mind a diesel of the same size.

I mean the Prius couldn't even beat a BMW 520d in a Sunday Times test where the test was designed to favour the Prius for 80% of the time and they deliberately drove the damm thing in towns, on back roads with low speeds instead of on the Motorway and the Prius still couldn't beat the much bigger BMW.

Now 45 mpg is actually 240 g/mile(yes I actually did go to the bother of trying to figure it out), far, far greater than the 167 g/mile mentioned earlier, and thus the Honda is better for the planet even using the figures mentioned above than the Smug/Pious/Prius. Oh and as Captain Slow explained, the FCX has a range of 250 miles.

If you've driven a Mitsubishi GDI engine, you would never believe that that engine is actually the future of the petrol engine, because that engine is vastly inferior to a standard petrol engine; it is noisier, less smooth, no more powerful, very coarse and harsh at higher revs, and most damming of all it was particularly unreliable, and when it went wrong(which it often did) it wasn't a matter of spending a few hundred quid to fix it and everything would be ok, no it could be thousands and even now 12 years on dealers still don't know how to fix these engines when they start coking.

It it didn't get enough revs or was driven in town too often, then it would go wrong sooner.

But why are BMW, Alfa, GM, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen/Audi/Seat/Skoda, Toyota, Lexus, FIAT, Peugeot, Citroen and even Ferrari and Porsche now using direct injection for some of their petrol engines(in the case of BMW, Alfa, and VAG they have almost fully switched over to GDI only petrols, I think Lexus only sells GDI petrols these days, they are that far ahead of the rest)? Even Merc AMG and BMW M division will soon be using the very same GDI technology that was such a spectacular failure for Mitsubishi?

Because GDI is now just as reliable as a standard petrol engine, and all the undesirable characteristics like poor refinement, added noise, harshness at higher revs etc have been eliminated. In short all the drawbacks of Mitsubishi's GDI engine are gone, which means that the advantages are now there to be used, and the advantages of GDI are more power at higher revs and crucially these engines can be far more efficient than a standard petrol engine(the Mitsubishi GDI could be extraordinarily economical, I've actually done over 60 mpg in one and that was driving on a main road at 60 mph) partciularly in part-throttle and constant speed driving.

You could make the same argument about turbos as well - when Saab and BMW brought in turbos they were slated for the lumpy power delivery and turbo lag, but nowadays turbos are so common in petrols they are almost like a default choice at this stage and BMW's recent turbo models are so good that they have won the International Engine of the Year award, not once but twice.

The reason I mention all of this is because I think it can be seen as a metaphor for what will happen with the Hydrogen car - like Mitsubishi's GDI engine there are initially many flaws and at the time the flaws outweighed the advantages, but give it time and the flaws will either disappear or be negligable and then the many advantages that are there will come to the fore and the car makers will start offering these kind of cars as an alternative to conventional cars and eventually just as turbos are now everywhere on diesels, and becoming ever more common on petrols, Hydrogen, be it via Honda's fuel cell approach or by BMW's internal combustion engine approch, will eventually take over and we'll wonder what we ever did without it:)!

Mr.David

E92 - yes that article was inaccurate in its representation of the Prius mpg/emissions, apologies I just lifted it straight from another source.

The point though, is that Hydrogen is not emission free, it simply moves the emissions farther down the production scale.

As regardes direct injection, I think that is a little different. DI represented an evolution of the internal combustion engine (albeit a very significant one) but hydrogen is much much more significant.

The DI issues with refinement etc are not comparable to the issues with hydrogen, we have been trying unsuccessfully to mass produce hydrogen affordably for many years. This is not a case of simply refining an existing technology.

Hydrogen is not the future. Wanna bet? this day in 10 years time I we can review

samih

I had a senior moment. Removing this as a pointless reply.

NewApproach

While I fully appreciate the argument that Hydrogen cars are not emission free, as it simply pushes the emissions further down the scale when it comes to actually developing the hydrogen used, surely a similar thing is happening with petrol/diesel today?

The oil must be drilled, transported, refined and transported again. Surely this also produces bad things for the enviroment, much like the processes involved in getting hydrogen to a state in which it can be used in cars.

Obviously these emissions in developing the petrol we use in cars today is not reflected in the official co2 output of a car, so why should we be unfairly biased by analysing the co2 used to develop hydrogen?

I accept it is a more arduous process to develop the hydrogen relative to petrol, but petrol still must be drilled and refined, and I think this fact has been overlooked thus far in this thread...

E92

Mr.David wrote: »

As regardes direct injection, I think that is a little different. DI represented an evolution of the internal combustion engine (albeit a very significant one) but hydrogen is much much more significant.

The DI issues with refinement etc are not comparable to the issues with hydrogen, we have been trying unsuccessfully to mass produce hydrogen affordably for many years. This is not a case of simply refining an existing technology.

Hydrogen is not the future. Wanna bet? this day in 10 years time I we can review

Well like I said in my reply - yes there are problems with Hydrogen now - of course there are, which is part of the reason why Hydrogen cars are only leased to people.

And no we won't be filling up with Hydrogen in 10 years time, we probably won't even be doing it in 20 years time either, but remember that the Merc 300 SL Gullwing from as recently as 1954 had direct injection.

And then you might say it just seemed to effectively disappear until 1996 when Mitsubishi's GDI came on the scene. There wasn't a direct injection petrol in the intervening period, correct me if I'm wrong on that.

But it didn't. Car makers started experimenting with direct injection back in the 70s. It might have effectively taken over 30 years before it came popular(it's really only in the last 4 or 5 years it has really taken off, in 05 when the then new Passat came out, all petrol models bar the LHD only 1.6 8v had direct injection, BMW have been phasing it in since 2002 starting with the V12 and working the way down the food chain to the point where every non M model will have it by early next year; once the new X3 goes on sale next year BMW will only be selling direct injection petrols (in Europe at least, there are still problems with fuel quality for the US and Austrailia)) but that doesn't mean it was a waste of time, or that because car makers started in the 70s and we still saw nothing in the 80s or even the early to mid 90s that direct injection was "not the future".

I mean turbos were famous for the lag you got from them when they first came out and BMW once said they would never build a petrol engine with a turbo again after the 2002ti and LHD only 745i from the 80s and sure enough they abandoned turbos for petrol engines for over 20 years but now they have a twin turbo straight 6, this year they added a twin turbo V8, and soon enough a twin turbo V12 will be coming and a 1.6 4 cylinder turbo is on the way as well. From the company which brought you the 2002ti which was slated for its lag now the same company is selling a turbo straight 6 which is an International Engine of the Year winner not once but twice.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you dismiss new technology today because of the flaws that are there now and say that it'll never work based on what we have today then you are making a grave error.

I mean 12 years ago, who would have said that GDI was going to be a good idea and the future of the petrol engine?

I bet nobody would, and I'm sure there were plenty of GDI doubters.

Of course when the stories about GDI reliability came out then those against GDI would have said "see I told you so - I always said it was a bad thing and now I've been proven right".

So you could say OK - it's time to throw in the towel now - it's a good idea in theory but in practice no it's not. But car makers didn't
and the GDI doubters proven wrong because the reliability improved to the point it's no less reliable than a standard petrol engine and the undesirable performance and refinement characteristics were all but eliminated. Meaning that the lower emissions and improved performance advantages could be seen for what they were.

And that's why some makes have it in almost eveything(like Lexus, BMW, Audi), others are phasing it in as we speak(Ferrari, Merc), and others are soon going to be starting sell GDI cars for the very first time.

Mazda have a 2.0 GDI 4 pot coming in the forthcoming 3, Jaguar-Land Rover have a new 5.0 V8 with direct injection, next year's E-class will feature a selection of direct injection petrols, and Ford have a 1.6 turbo 4 pot with it as well coming in 2010.

And it is going to be the same with fuel cells. At the moment they are a false dawn, just like GDI was at the start, but with plenty of money, R&D and time and things will improve dramatically, the range will increase, the cost will come down, the pollution problems will be reduced or even eliminated.

Technology often changes in cars, I mean look at the diesel engine today compared to 10 years ago, a lot of people decided in Europe that the massively improved performance and the fuel economy outweighed the superior refinement of a petrol.

Now because of things like GDI, and increased standards for non CO2 exhaust emissions, the car industry is going back to petrol(the EU has much weaker non CO2 emission standards for diesels than for petrols but this thankfully is starting to change with Euro 5 and in 2014 Euro 6), and Europeans are moving back to petrol as well. Of course politicans have more or less decided that petrol electric hybrids are better than diesel too so that's why we will see a move back to petrol as well. In a few years time diesel will only be in larger cars, in smaller cars it's back to petrol we're going:)!

A little publicised thing is the Home Energy Station which would enable you to effectively create your own hydrogen and actually attempts to address the environmental concerns you mentioned(though admittedly it uses Natural Gas to achieve this:D, then again the new "clean" diesels that are coming in the next couple of years will be using AdBlue and it comes from Natural Gas and piss and a coupke of other things and nobody seems to mind that at all).