Future murky for hydrogen-powered Clarity

Roland Jones • Profile • E-mail

With great fanfare, Honda’s first-ever zero-emission, hydrogen-powered car rolled off the automaker’s production line earlier this month. But don’t look for one on a highway near you anytime soon.

The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity and emits only water as a byproduct, will be available for lease starting July to a very, very limited number of customers in California. Among the first drivers — hand-chosen by the automaker — are movie star Jamie Lee Curtis and filmmaker Ron Yerxa.

Honda’s Clarity may sound like a breakthrough for drivers struggling with the high price of gasoline, but it’s just one of a wide range of potential solutions being tested to wean the auto economy off costly, polluting crude oil. The prospects of hydrogen as a solution are far from certain, observers say, as it could take several decades until hydrogen-powered cars are widely available.

“If you were to take a poll of automotive journalists I think about half of them would say the future is hydrogen,” said Tom Appel, associate publisher of Consumer Guide Automotive, which offers buying advice to car consumers. “It’s clean, and it looks like it will be available at a low cost at some point in the future. So it looks like it should work when the infrastructure is put in place, but that’s going to be some time from now.”

So far, Honda's plans are modest. The Japanese automaker intends to export just 200 Claritys to the U.S. over the next three years, with selected customers offered a subsidized, $600-a-month, three-year lease, which includes maintenance and insurance. With the small volume the vehicles cost several hundred thousand dollars each to manufacture.

Video   Powering the planet June 23: CNBC’s Melissa Lee looks at the outlook for fuel-cell vehicles, which run on hydrogen. CNBC

The vehicle certainly looks promising on paper. Honda says the vehicle is twice as energy-efficient as a gas-electric hybrid, such as a Toyota Prius, and three times that of a regular gas-powered car.

Honda has designed the car to be as driver-friendly as possible. The vehicle does zero to 60 mph in 10 seconds, has a top speed of 100 mph and runs for 280 miles on a single tank of compressed hydrogen gas — all acceptable specifications for a regular car, notes Appel. But a number of obstacles remain before hydrogen cars can be considered a viable alternative.

“The main issue here is inconvenience; there are only a few hydrogen filling stations dotted around the country, and there’s the battle to make this a viable car to mass produce,” Appel said. “And at $600 a month for a lease, the Clarity is still fairly pricey even though it’s subsidized, and the cost of producing fuel cells is still very expensive.”

Hydrogen-powered cars like the Clarity run on power generated by mixing oxygen with hydrogen in a fuel-cell stack, where the elements react in the presence of an electrolyte. Fuel cells are heavy and difficult to make, fragile and not completely reliable in freezing temperatures, according to Appel.

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