FCX: Hondas Vision of Our AutoMobile Transportation Future
Honda Motors Company’s tiny FCX Hatchback is big automotive news, powered by the Honda researched and developed fuel cell stack with innovations that enable it to start and operate at sub-freezing temperatures as low as -4 degrees fahrenheit (it could even start in Denver, Colorado) and once it is on the highway increased acceleration, range and fuel efficiency.
The FCX is motivated by an electric motor developed by Honda with knowledge gained developing the EV-Plus Electric Vehicle. (Drivers who leased the first generation of “alternate fuel vehicles” lamanted their discountinued production by various manufacturers, but they were actually “battery equipped vehicles” more than “Electric Cars”.)
Two 350-Atmosphere High-Pressue Hydrogen tanks equaling 41 gallons fuel capacity are constructed of glass fiber layered over carbon fiber layered over an aluminum inner tank. Gassing-up at a high-pressure fueling station takes only three minutes.
Using electricity storing capacitors instead of much heavier batteries to recapture energy wasted used by braking, in conventional automobiles, and coasting downhill; these capacitors store electrical energy to smooth the power flow to the motor during acceleration, enhancing the safety of passing maneuvers.
The Honda’s electric motor is rated at 80 horsepower with 201 pound-feet of torque. An air-compressor is used to feed air to the fuel stack, previously air pumps were used that emitted a high-pitched siren’s wail, another problem solved by Honda.
an automatic transmission engages the direct-drive powertrain.
The fuel cell operates by taking-in hydrogen in one end of the stack, pushes it through a platinum-coated membrane, combining that with oxygen on the other side of the stack which creates water vapor by stripping each Hydrogen atom of it’s single electron. When a great enough quantity of atoms travel this path enough electricity is generated to power the Honda FCX. Water vapor is the only byproduct of this process. Presently, five FCX’s are being leased by The City of Los Angeles government, so we will find out how the car handles freeways, downtown traffic-jams, mountain driving (Los Angeles has a National Forest within the city!) and of couse coffee and doughnut runs. The CFX is also the offical pace car of the Los Angeles Marathon, letting the thousands of runners behind it breathe freely without inhaling a conventional combustion engined automobiles toxic exhaust gases.
