Gadgetory

Honda was one the first companies to put fuel cell cars out there now in little tiny numbers but for example their FCX Clarity is out there in a modest lease fleet around southern california has been for a while very finished car this is what's coming next this is their FCV concept to be honest it's head-on with the Toyota Mirai which is going the same direction trying to get you around 300 miles of range on a fill-up of hydrogen that takes just a few minutes to put in all of that is very gasoline like as you've noticed these cars hold five passengers like a Camry for example the key that these companies are trying to do Honda in particular is to push hydrogen fuel-cell as the most normal alternative to the gasoline car without range anxiety or weird packaging issues now this vehicle is not coming to production any time soon it'll be 2016 in Japan and later come to the US and certainly will be in small numbers they're not gonna put these anywhere the people can't get hydrogen that's the other part of the story they're going to invest not a king's ransom but 14 million dollars with a company called first element fuel which is building fuel infrastructure here in California that's almost a bigger concern than car makers doing the in-car engineering itself now as with almost everything tech getting smaller and more capable is a big deal this is the Honda fuel cell they've been using up until now and it's the given size and it has two kilowatts of power per litre of its volume where the actual fuel cell guts are now here's where the fuel cell is go on then over here is the new one they've brought down the size by a third and they've increased the power density the amount of power per the volume of guts by about sixty percent so we're now getting 3.1 kilowatts out of a leader of capacity okay real quick fuel cell vehicle 101 to bring all this together first of all here's your fuel cell stack that's what converts hydrogen to electricity in simple terms down here is your electric motor up here is the high current switching and control module and interestingly I didn't realize this down here is a turbo then you might say what's a turbo doing on an electric car this is an air turbo it's powered by an electric motor to bring in air and basically RAM enough air into the fuel cell so that there's enough to react with the hydrogen you can't just let it drift in there atmospherically notice this whole power unit is generally the size of let's say a four zone or a v6 engine in an accord today or in a civic perhaps that's the point of making everything smaller not to say you did it but to say you know what we can probably retrofit this to some existing platforms without too much work that's where you get your investment back