CARazed

Have you seen the ads for the the fuel cell powered Honda FCX Clarity? I noticed one on YouTube this morning. If you live in Torrance, Santa Monica or Irvine, in southern California you might be eligible to lease one for $600 a month.

If you don’t live there Honda will have a home energy station for refueling the car in the near future. You see the main problem with fuel cell technology isn’t the technology, it’s the lack of a hydrogen infrastructure. To solve this big problem Honda has developed technology that makes hydrogen right in your own home from the natural gas you already have. In other words leverage the natural gas infrastructure. In fact I bet if hydrogen fuel cell cars become popular the energy companies would love to build new fueling stations directly connected to the natural gas grid and sell us natural gas.

Side Note: Conspiracy theorists think that the Bush Administration and the energy companies are interested in invading Iran because it is the second largest repository of natural gas in the world. In other words there is something very profitable under Iranian soil. Now back to reality…

It’s important to note that the car is a zero emissions vehicle but the home energy station will emit carbon dioxide when it makes hydrogen. SO the whole system is not zero emissions. It’s better than burning gasoline or diesel but most of today’s hydrogen still comes from fossil fuels, in this case natural gas. Now if renewable energy sources were used to generate the electricity needed for making hydrogen from the electrolysis of water, then we might really have a super low impact vehicle. Or better yet, just use the electricity for an electric car.

I don’t mean to dump on Honda, this car is amazing. I just think the right course of action is to focus on plug-in hybrids for the near term (next 10 to 15 years) needs and electric cars for the long term solution. Some peple will find electric cars useful today but I suspect until the range and recharging issues are resolved they won’t meet everyone’s needs.

We still need to source our electricity from lower impact technologies (solar, wind, hydro) but the infrastructure is here today making plug-in hybrids and electric cars perfectly doable. In the future I can see hydrogen being used for vehicles requiring a longer range since electric cars will be mostly good for local travel until rapid charging and battery efficiency make some big leaps forward.

Anyway… if you want to participate in this very historic lease program right now is the time to jump on board. Don’t delay.