CARazed

In November 2007 Honda showed off their fuel cell production car at the Los Angeles Auto Show. This is a zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle based on Honda’s new V Flow fuel cell platform. This system give the car improved driving range, weight and power efficiency.

Honda also announced that some lucky Southern California drivers will be able to lease one this coming summer (2008) for about $600 per month for three years. The cost includes maintenance and collision insurance.

It seems Honda is limiting the initial lease to Southern California because the car needs specialized maintenance which requires that Honda set-up a service infrastructure to support the car. It also seems like a perfectly logical place to do a trial like this.

The V Flow system drives the car by generating electricity from a chemical reaction by combining air (atmospheric oxygen) with the hydrogen fuel cell stack. The exhaust is water. The electricity powers the drive system directly of in combination with a compact lithium ion battery pack. Regenerative breaking also puts electricity back in the batteries. The vehicles range is about 270 miles.

There are CO₂ emissions during the production of the hydrogen used to refuel the car. The emissions from this vary depending on the way the hydrogen is created. A common method of creating hydrogen is through electrolysis of water. As you know water is H₂O. There are two hydrogen atoms per oxygen atom. You can separate the hydrogen and oxygen easily by passing electricity through water, a.k.a electrolysis.

Unfortunately the most popular method of creating hydrogen comes from processing natural gas, a fossil fuel. Although this process creates about 50% the CO₂ emissions gasoline creates it still leave us dependent on fossil fuels.

Luckily Honda is clearly aware of this issue and has also been working on new photovoltaic solar cell technology designed to offer alternatives to the current preferred natural gas based method of creating hydrogen.

I personally think it’s ironic that a seemingly super green technology like hydrogen fuel cells actually still means we could be dependent on fossil fuels. If we could generate all our hydrogen without harvesting it from natural gas that would be great but it seems to me unlikely since all the production focus seems to be moving toward natural gas.

The top reserves for natural gas are in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States, (see full list of countries with large natural gas reserves). In other words it seems that the current dependency on foreign oil problem could transform itself into a dependency on foreign natural gas if we’re not planning ahead now. Comments?