Hydrogen horizons
NOTTINGHAM, N.H.
ON A FALL day, the back roads of southern New Hampshire are always fun to drive, and all the more so with the knowledge that the car is not putting one ounce of pollution into the air. That was the case recently when I test-drove a Honda FCX, the automaker's pioneering hydrogen-powered four-seater. In the car's fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen are combined to produce electricity that runs the motor. There is only one emission -- water.
During acceleration, which is peppy, the FCX also produces a whine. If hydrogen fuel cell cars are the vehicles of the future, that sound will be as reassuring to a new generation of drivers as the throaty growl of a gasoline engine is to this one. Other things to get used to are reminders of the explosiveness of hydrogen: a sensor up near the dome light that signals any leakage of hydrogen and a special grounding device for use when refueling.
Refueling is one of the question marks over the FCX and all hydrogen cars. Honda says its model gets 190 miles out of the two tanks on board totaling 3.75 kilograms of compressed hydrogen. That's the energy-efficiency equivalent of 60 miles per gallon of gasoline. That range is considerably less than conventional cars get. This would not be such a problem if there were hydrogen filling stations every dozen miles or so, but currently the one closest to New England is in Albany.
California plans a ''Hydrogen Highway" of filling stations, so it is likely to be the place where fuel cell cars make their first inroads. That state is better suited than New England for another reason: Honda can't promise that the FCX will start when the temperature goes below minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Unless galloping global warming puts an end to cold spells in the region, fuel cell cars will be an iffy proposition in the frost belt.
The final but biggest riddle is how to produce the hydrogen in a clean and affordable way: It now costs the equivalent of $5-per-gallon gasoline. Hydrogen is an abundant element, but unwrapping it from water or hydrocarbons is itself a resource-consuming process. Refining hydrogen out of natural gas, an increasingly scarce fuel, produces carbon-dioxide emissions. Nor is the environment helped if the hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water using electricity from a coal-fired power plant, unless the power plant's carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored underground. A truly emission-free transportation system would use hydrogen produced through photovoltaic, hydroelectric, wind, or nuclear power.
Automakers like Honda are putting the car before the hydrogen. Grappling with the hydrogen supply problem could make that spin I took through Rockingham County my last ride in a fuel cell car for a very long time.
DONALD MacGILLIS
