About the identical time it rolls out its first long-range battery-electric automobile, Honda plans to return to market with an all-new, hydrogen-powered model of its well-liked CR-V, the crossover utilizing a fuel-cell system developed as a part of a three way partnership with General Motors.
While preliminary gross sales targets are modest, about 2,000 a 12 months at first, the Japanese automaker hopes to develop demand to as a lot as 60,000 of the CR-V FCEVs by 2030. The longer-term purpose, the carmaker stated in a press release, is a “few hundred thousand units per year by the second half of the 2030s.”
“Hydrogen will play a particularly important role in achieving carbon neutrality,” Senior Managing Executive Officer Shinji Aoyama stated throughout a information convention at Honda’s headquarters in Tokyo on Thursday. “With this system, we have been striving for lower costs, high durability and improved low temperature resistance.”
Refillable batteries
Fuel-cells are typically known as “refillable batteries,” as they depend on the identical electrical motors as EVs to energy their wheels. But as an alternative of batteries FCEVs use a expertise referred to as a fuel-cell stack. At their most elementary, these units mix hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the environment within the presence of a catalyst, equivalent to platinum. That strips away electrons used to energy the automobile’s motor drive system. The solely exhaust fuel, in the meantime, is water vapor.
Honda was an early proponent of fuel-cell expertise and launched the hydrogen-powered Clarity in 2016. But it dropped the sedan on the finish of the 2021 mannequin 12 months and was anticipated to introduce a brand new model. Instead, it plans to carry again the expertise as an possibility for the CR-V, its hottest product line.
Slashing prices
Significantly, the automaker stated it has reduce the price of the next-generation fuel-cell system by two-thirds which ought to make the hydrogen rather more reasonably priced than the previous Clarity, enhancing its enchantment.
“This significant cost reduction was achieved by various measures including the adoption of innovative materials for electrodes, advancement of a cell sealing structure, simplification of the supporting equipment (“balance of plant”) and the advance of productiveness,” Honda stated in its assertion.
Other benefits
“Moreover, the durability of the system was doubled by the application of corrosion-resistant materials and controlled suppression of deterioration, and low temperature resistance was also increased significantly.”
Proponents of fuel-cell expertise level to a different plus: the comparatively lengthy vary that fuel-cell automobiles can supply, usually 300 to 400 miles per tankful of the light-weight fuel. And the place it could possibly take some electrical automobiles an hour or extra to cost up, refilling an FCEV may be accomplished in about the identical time it takes to gas up a gas-powered automobile.
The fuel-cell system going into the CR-V is the long-await product of a Honda-GM three way partnership introduced in 2013. That partnership has already paid off for the Detroit automaker which has launched a line of hydrogen-powered cell mills.
An early pioneer
While GM additionally was an early pioneer of hydrogen expertise, it determined to give attention to non-automotive functions. Among different issues, it’s engaged on methods to make use of a fuel-cell system to in locomotives to switch standard diesel-electric drive techniques.
Honda is exploring related earthly choices, it stated in its assertion, whereas additionally “envisioning use in outer space.” In truth, fuel-cell expertise had its first critical software within the Apollo program, offering electrical energy to the manned capsules flying the Earth to the moon and again.
The fuel-cell system for the CR-V shall be produced at a plant operated by the Honda-GM three way partnership in suburban Detroit. The automobile itself shall be assembled in Marysville, Ohio utilizing a specialty facility authentic constructed to deal with the Acura NSX. That supercar was not too long ago discontinued.
The competitors
GM and Honda have a handful of rivals within the fuel-cell area. Both Toyota and Hyundai now supply FCEVs within the U.S. market, although gross sales are restricted to a handful of areas, principally in California, the place the gas is on the market. The lack of a refueling community is seen as one of many largest challenges to widespread adoption of FCEVs.
Some proponents consider the expertise will acquire a much bigger foothold within the business automobile market the place common routes will make it simpler to arrange refueling stations.
Toyota and Hyundai each have begun working prototype fuel-cell vans out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Meanwhile, startup Nikola plans to start delivering its first hydrogen-powered vans later this 12 months. And it has arrange a brand new subsidiary to create a refueling community.
Source: www.thedetroitbureau.com