Team-BHP - Honda Jets to the Future

hi BHPians,

Honda rolled out two new concept cars at the LA Auto Show yesterday -- a sports car that looks ready

for the runway and an hybrid fuel cell vehicle.
The silver sports car looks like a mini jet fighter and features a 4-cylinder engine and a 6-speed manual transmission. Nice eye candy for now, but it could be the shape of real things to come.
Even more interestingly Honda has hybridized its FCX fuel cell vehicle and plans to roll out a new production model in 2008. The new FCX features and redesigned fuel cell stack and drive train that are is much lighter and 40 percent smaller than the previous model. The 127 horsepower vehicle uses a natural Bio-Fabric for the interior (yeah less plastics!), and replaces mechanical parts with a Shift By Wire transmission.

Most significantly Honda added a lithium ion battery for auxiliary power. This shows that hybrid technology will enable fuel cell vehicles to be more efficient by capturing braking energy and extend their vehicle range. The press release doesn't mention if the car can run only on battery power at low speeds however.
Fuel cell technology still has lots of room for improvement before it will become cost effective, and then there's the hydrogen infrastructure problem. But the continued progress is encouraging.

P.S. - Mods, please move this thread if its not appropriate

Somehow I see a lot of Accord in the second concept. All this talk of alternate energies is damn interesting, and its only anyones guess what the next big automotive fuel may be. Most global manufacturers are placing strong bets on different kinds of energy sources...so its going to be jackpot for some, and a drain for the others. Something like Sony and its proprietory DVD technology.

This discussion about alternate fuels reminds me of an interesting interview of Mr. Carlos Ghosn where he made a convincing argument of why Nissan wont invest in alternate fuels.

Or maybe its because they cant afford it.

[HTML]
This discussion about alternate fuels reminds me of an interesting interview of Mr. Carlos Ghosn where he made a convincing argument of why Nissan wont invest in alternate fuels.
[/HTML]
hi,
may i know what exactly was the argument made by Mr. Carlos about the alternate fuel or from where can i get what he told (Source).

i see civic, accord, tsx and tl in the second car.

the first one looks a bit similar to the acura advanced concept(for the sake of your eyes, dont google that.)

alternative fuels will succed, which fuel though will remain to be seen. i was watching a show on discovery where they showed a couple of air(yes air) powered vehicles, one had a rotary engine and they use compressed air stored in tanks.

Those who're following the Interwebs would be aware of the Honda FCX concept, now to be released as Honda Clarity. It comes to the market in 2008.

Honda FCX Clarity: Car of the century? - Telegraph

Has a hydrogen fuel-cell driven motor, with a range of 270k and a 0-100 time of around 10 seconds. The cool thing is, they've come up with another innovative way to refuel the thing - a home-based device to convert piped gas(cooking gas) to hydrogen.

Alternative Energy: The Best Way to Refuel Your FCX Clarity

Natural gas is reasonably abundant, and after a long time, I think this is a reasonably good alternative energy concept. The styling is not too bad, there is reasonable power and range, and they seem to have answered the refuelling question. With just water vapour as exhaust, this is possibly the cleanest option too.

I'm hoping a few enterprising Indian carmakers take inspiration, and start exploring alternative energy concepts soon enough.

I thought Honda was already selling the FCX in California and some other states and they also had a number of hydrogen filling stations there. Although the initial operational cost is much higher than diesel or gasoline, but it gives out zero emissions. But Honda said that once they opened up more filling stations, then it'll be much cheaper to run.