Honda says hydrogen-powered vehicle lighter, more efficient

600 dollars should make it around 60,000 yen in Japan and 720,000 yen per year. That sounds reasonable to me, considering the cost of oil, to lease it for about 3 years and then see what the future brings.

Cost in Australia: Average car $40,000 over 5 years + ALL Running costs = $75,000. 1 year = $15,000. 1 month= $1,200 . So, $600 to lease sounds good , but how much will the HYDROGEN FUEL cost ? Great idea!

I'll be lining up for one of these for sure.

Fuel Cell cars have a myriad of problems facing them. (1) The optimal catalyst used in the cell-stack is platinum, prohibitively expensive. It takes about 70kW to run a mid-size car, needing 2+Kg of the precious metal. (2) Current stack technology has easily cracked graphite plates which regularly fail under normal road usage vibration, although they're getting better. (2) Hydrogen is a material deteriorating substance making even advanced resin tanks subject to porousness, and therefore leaks. Static electricity, or smoking in a vehicle will cause explosions under those circumstances. (3) There are now 8 H2 fueling stations in Japan, all of them in private research facilities. There are no plans to put them in your local gas station. (4) Currently, the best FC's of the size to run a car cost about US$25k retail, if you can get them. (That's just the fuel cell stack!) They need to cost US$50 to be competitive with an internal combustion engine. (5) And last but not least, a California based fuel cell study group has come up with an interesting factoid. A year 2001 Toyota Prius WAS more eco-friendly (concept-to-use-to-recycling life cycle) than what they estimate a year 2020 Hydrogen fuel-cell car WILL be, if it ever comes to market. Other kinds of fuel cells will probably make the market first; Direct Methanol, Diesel, Kerosene, Gasoline, Solid Oxide and they will be hidden products, kinda like batteries in your keitai or a small motor in washing machine, camper van or other product. More info: www.fuelcelltoday.com www.fuelcellmarkets.com and my favourite: http://www.fair-pr.com/hm08/index.html Lotsa work still to do on fuel cells.

The above post is misinformation from Big Oil. The biggest misinformation is that the technology to produce in-car-hydrogen is not available. Yet, in the USA, in 1935, Garrett patented in-car-produced hydrogen, using electrolysis, with platinum and palladium electrodes. In the 1970s a Swiss scientist had 300 trucks and tractors running on hydrogen, made by putting a radio frequency through water vapour. The corrupt govrernmant of that time forced these vehicles to be normalised. Today on can buy in-car-producing hydrogen add-on,s using closely spaced stainless steel plates, with distilled water and potassium hydroxide. This added through the air intake greatly reduces fuel consumption. It requires only a few amps of power. Selling or promoting these products leads to mysterious accidental deaths to most the inventors. Please somebody do tell me that in an age when a color digital picture can be sent back from the planet Mars, our brilliant scientists cannot efficiently split a water molecule to give us in-car.produced hydrogen. And NO, it is not explosive, the Hindenburg Airship only burnt, and allowed many of those on board to survive, despite its millions of cubic feet of hydtogen.

These cars are made so light you would have better chance of surviving a crash in a K-car.

NorikoT you are full of misinformation. I am not now, nor have I ever been a promoter of big oil. I run a "below-the-radar" (intellectual property protecting) Green Energy company in Japan, PROMOTING fuel cells, solar power, bio-mass methane gas re-conversion, and other, yet undisclosed technologies. I have a Japanese Government security clearance, access to key METI & NEDO decision makers, the Prime Minister's personal telephone number and I am active in showcasing the G8 Summit's clean energy initiatives in Hokkaido this year. A Ph.D. from M.I.T. in new energy and several new substances developed by "my own hands", I have little patience for housebound new mother "I saw this on TV" experts, as you obviously are. Check the F A C T S, read the American Materials Association bulletins on the topics I have mentioned (if you can read them) and when you have the intellectual capacity to debate the veracity (that means truth) of what I say, write back. Today I just "verified" Honda's claims, and they are impressive, but not that revolutionary. Toyota's are better. Go back to your dirty house, clean it up, and leave the greater environment to the experts. My previous mail was to dispel such lunatic fringe ideas as yours, and to educate the public who see fuel cells as a panacea. They are not. Useful in certain circumstances, yes, definitely. The answer to our problems, most definitely not.

NorikoT The Hindenburg fire was caused by static electricity. The materials on the aircraft caught fire, and it was not caused by H2. H2 is a clear, odorless, gas, which even when ignited has no visible flame. Check the videos of the fire, flames abound. That was not H2. Another myth, if you can see it, it's not H2! Anytime you'd like to come to my lab and play with fire & H2, be my guest. Say "Sayonara" to your loved ones and write your will in advance. H2 is more explosive in its inert state that C4 plastique is explosive. Better yet, check Wikipedia, that bastion of democratized "knowledge." (Spit!)

how crazy can you be to drive a car loaded with hydrogen on the highway? no way this will be a viable solution for the future. give us more money and we'll make that solar cell viable

timeon:

how crazy can you be to drive a car loaded with hydrogen on the highway?

How about driving a car loaded with gasoline? Or battery acid? Or use a flammable fluid to power the brakes or steering?

Oh wait, we already do...

Wow! Grouchy!!! So you've got all these credentials and yet you grace us with your presence and vast knowledge. How do you have the time? Ok, well this is not a Physics or Chemistry science forum filled with your callibur of thinkers, just a bunch of average joe's and julies speaking their mind thanks to JT, so ease off the lady. She's entitled to her opinion. You are way over the top in attacking her. The Hydro 4 gas add ons she's talking about is going through some grueling tests as we speak. And as for H2, yes, I studied chemistry in college. But if we were to just compare testing data availible on both as you suggested in your lab. I am sure the NTSB has vast more data on the deaths caused by that explosive gem called gasoline. Yet compared to the data availible for Hydrogen. Gosh..how many people have died as a result of hydrogen explosions? Yet the US uses millions cubic feet of the stuff injecting it into various products after its stripped from Natural Gas. Not too many saftey issues reported there. Like I have always said this is a way smaller problem then we incurred putting a man on the moon. We just have to get behind it fully.

Oh by the way the material on the aircraft that caused the hindenburg to burn was Aluminum dust particles on the skin of the ship. Sorry didn't go to MIT. I am really well read though..

Most oil companies don't care one way or another about Hydrogen. Commercially, most hydrogen is a byproduct of natural gas processing. Most of which is released into the atmosphere right now. Sure, they aren't all that jazzed about paying to create the infrastructure to sell it globally, and some energy companies have weak natural gas portfolios, however, the end calculation is fuel cells will generally keep the status quo.

Gouchy,

Honda is not a dumb company investing millions into this technology. Hydrogen has been touted for a while now as being a viable future technology. Your comments seem to buck this trend and perhaps reveals your vested interests in other undisclosed energy technologies. I am all for truth and facts, but all you give are factoids and assume we all believe you because you claim to have a nice degree from MIT.

You have to present your ideas much better as an anonymous poster if you are going to challenge the credibility of a company such as Honda (which is not anonymous).

I see, Grouchy, Garretts patent in 1935 is misinformation. I thought US didnt give patents for non-working gadgets. Newmann had been refused a patent for his so called over unity device for 35 years, (I wonder why as it actually does work). Thats OK I suppose, in your little upside down oil controlled world, because there is no over-unity. Right? Wrong,, Prof Tom Beardens Motionleas Electromagnetic Generator, again so called over- unity, does have a patent, but nobody dares producer it. The splitting of water/water vapour was again recently demo-d on worldwide TV news. No doubt a fraudster/trickster/ conspiracy nutcase according to you, right? Is the 1970s Swiss work also misinfo based on this premise? Hydrogen in all these in-vehicle devuces was for on-demand, but Garrett did have a small cylidrical stainless steell storage tank in the boot/trubk in which the hydrogen was produced.Sorry. We dont believe Am Material Bulletins any more than we believe official reports that the WTC towers free fell from aviation fuel that burns at 800C. We need to look at mini nukes from the smoke patterns, cars but not paper igniting, steel reduced to micro-spheres, computors and bodies vapourising. etc. We dont go with govt conspiracy theories, such as the one about an Arab in a cave in Afghan who shut down the half trillion dollar US air defenses with his laptop. Anybody so violently attacking the messenger as your goodself, has an agenda. Whos epayroll are you on?

A NewZealander by the name of Archie Blue had a water powered mini running 100miles to the gallon in the sixties. He was offered alot of money by Saudi oil companies for full rights to his patent but he refused. He went to work in the UK for a research organisation instead. He continued to resarch and develop his ideas but was shot at in his lab, and ocnstantly threatened, after his eventual death by natural causes all his lab and materials and data were strangely destroyed.

There are also other alternatives to fuel cells in the pipe lines, and which Honda has been looking into. Im not sure why they havnt done more with it yet, but Im sure there is a reason. Anyway, its to do with Carbon based capaciters, much smaller, much more efficient at storing and putting out energy, and with a much much longer life span. No its not something I read somewhere, I have spoken to the person with the patent for Australasia and he has shown me reports and various items and products that are not in mass production, but they are there all the same. The problem is getting the public and the big companies to make use of them. Public is sceptical of anything new and different, and big companies fear the publics slow adoption of new technology, and of the outlay involved in mass producing new technology, not to mention the risk in losing an already established source of revenue.

Fairdinkum: some lightweight materials stand up to a hell of a battering. A cop mate of mine saw a rear end collision between a old school holden and a new model Mazda RX7, the 7 in the front. At a high speed the holden spun the 7 around about three times, the fibreglass pretty much bounced off the big heavy holden, the holden was a mess, the seven had a damaged rear bumper. Bring on the new lightweight non-gas cars of the future I say. If they go fast and look cool, and make a satisfying rumble when they start up( may need a fake rumble), I will happily say goodbye to the gas guzzler beasts we have now. (albeit with a tear in my eye).

Honda does not tell us where the hydrogen for this wonderful gadget is supposed to come from.

Zaphod - "Honda does not tell us where the hydrogen for this wonderful gadget is supposed to come from."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Well, being as how hydrogen constitutes roughly 75% of the universe's elemental mass, I guess it's not too hard to come by!