Honda's silent achiever

HYDROGEN HONDA: The FCX II hydrogen fuel cell car is due to reach the market in 2009 and is likely to surprise many with its speed and looks.

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Silent, deceptively quick, and even fun to drive, the world's first showroom hydrogen fuel cell car is just around the corner, and Dave Moore has driven it.

Belt up, select "Drive" using a small plastic lug to the right of the steering wheel, release the double-action foot brake, and press the pedal on the right. That's it. You've just had your complete instruction session for the Honda FCX II.

The silent, four-seat sedan leaps off the line with immediate alacrity – one of the many pleasing traits of electric drive – and reaches 80km/h in what seems a couple of heartbeats. This is a quick car – reinforced when the white-coated engineer accompanying me explains that it is, in fact, doing 80 MILES an hour!

In a production version of the car, energy from braking will also be used to charge some li-ion batteries.

I slow for a tight hairpin bend and the car courses through it with a pleasingly flat, firm attitude, performing a slight wriggle through the front-drive system as it deploys the electric motor's prodigious torque. It feels like a silent sports car, with plenty of go, a remarkably pliant chassis and an exhaust emissions level that makes you feel as smug as a cyclist.

The FCX II uses electricity generated by combining hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell stack, as well as electricity stored in the li-ion battery pack, to power the vehicle's electric motor.

Honda says that when its first production fuel cell car reaches the market in 2009 it will look very similar to the FCX II concept model I've been driving.

Stunningly shaped, thanks to its fuel cells and powerplant that are lighter and more compact than conventional petrol and diesel systems and can be tucked away anywhere, the FCX II's profile displays just how quickly things can change in the automotive business.

Honda's first FCX was the shape of the likely progeny of a one-night stand between a surgical boot and a Logo hatchback. Four years ago, when that car appeared, its fuel cells and electric power systems were less compact and more difficult to package, and frankly, although the car was nice to drive, clean as a whistle and absolutely silent, it couldn't be described as exactly desirable, except perhaps to the staunchest greenie.

The first FCX was estimated to have cost Honda more than $US1.5 million to build, not counting the research and development costs and the investment in the car's engineering and the salaries of the thousands of workers in the United States and Japan involved with the project.

The FCX II is also a seven-figure car, although Honda says it expects the sticker for the production version to be about a tenth of the original FCX's asking price when it hits the streets. For the meantime, the car will be available on special lease deals to specially selected customers in the US and Japan.

When it is available, the FCX II will have a range of about 450km and be capable of speeds beyond 160km/ h. In other words, it will have a similar capability to that of an Accord V6 while consuming nothing more than hydrogen, and emitting pure water in the form of steam from its exhaust.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that. Honda intends for its FCX II to fuel up by using a special infrastructure consisting of gas stations powered by solar panels and using water to supply the hydrogen, which will be stored in liquid form in a pressurised container aboard the car.

The car takes 10 minutes to fill and the hydrogen takes much longer than that to be produced. Honda is also working on allowing the FCX II owner extract hydrogen from a home-based gas reticulation system – although such a system will use fossil fuels and is seen as a stop-gap measure only.

The production version will be unveiled at the Los Angeles car show next month, and Takeo Fukui, Honda's president and chief executive, says the car will look like the FCX II, with room for four in a space-age cabin which will have a gauge showing you how much range you have left instead of an E to F fuel dial.

My short, but very educating drive, suggests that while some of the stories of doom and gloom are probably right, Honda's take on the future of driving makes more than a good job out of a bad situation.

Driving might just be fun again.

In fact, it'll be literally a gas, once the support infrastructure has been established and the price has dropped a little more.

- © Fairfax NZ News