The actual quote by Honda Clarity driver and assistant Principal Jack Cusick is, “They’re going to have to break into my garage if they think they’re getting this car back in three years.”

The Los Angeles Times wrote an interesting article about the Honda FCX Clarity that adds some tidbits to the information I’ve already published about this car. And I have already published quite a bit of info about the Honda Clarity.

One tidbit of information is that even though the 3 year lease is steep at $600 per month, this price also includes comprehensive and collision insurance, the cost of hydrogen fuel, plus regular maintenance.

Another tidbit is that there are currently 20 Honda Clarity drivers, but once hydrogen stations in Southern California are opened later this year in Newport Beach, Fountain Valley, Torrance and Harbor City, then this will allow 180 more Clarity drivers to be added to the program.

The last tidbit is from UC Irvine technology manager Tim Brown, who researches picking the right locations for future hydrogen stations, “If you optimize where you put them, 8 hydrogen stations can ensure the same level of service as 34 gas stations.”

Okay, I’m all out of tidbits this time around. But I’ll leave you with one last thought. Since I don’t live too far away from Mr. Cusick, it may not be Honda breaking into his garage before 3 years is up, taking his Clarity out for a joyride along the Pacific Coast Highway. So, lock that garage. 

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Brian Hess (Hessgen founder/inventor) decided to tackle the Baja 500, a tortuous race by any means, in a partly hydrogen powered truck. The Hessgen Hydrogen Trophy Truck #88 is a 700 HP beast that completed the 500 mile journey in 22 hours.

The Hessgen Trophy Truck is a dual fuel vehicle partly powered by race fuel and partly powered by a hydrogen tank that sits on top of the vehicle. The rough ride also resulted in a crash.

According to Hessgen, “The Baja race course proved to be nastier than expected, by race mile 5 Hess had flipped the truck over and the entire plan lay on its back in a ditch. With enormous help from the Mexican people watching the race and a quick ‘hotwire of a forklift’ by Hess, trophy truck #88 was back in business and back on course in less than 90 minutes.

“The hydrogen system located on the top rear section of the truck had survived the crash and was still working flawlessly! This alone proved that the Hessgen System is safe in an impact-rollover crash and tough enough to meet the demands of everyday over the road driving.”

Now, I’ve talked about hydrogen race cars on the main website and I’ve talked about the H2 race cars on the blog as well. But, out of the group of vehicles, the roughest most bone jarring ride has to be that of the Hessgen Hydrogen Trophy Truck.

This venue not only shows off the power of hydrogen but the safety of the tanks and systems as well. In March 2010, I had talked about the Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell that was totaled in an accident by one of its Project Driveway drivers where no one was hurt and nothing caught fire.

People are slowly coming around to the idea that hydrogen cars and vehicles are as safe as the fossil fuel cars they drive now. The rough and tumble Baja 500 is one more step in proving this to the public at large.

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The European Commission Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking has announced that it has $60.5 million USD in funding to grant towards hydrogen cars, refueling stations, production, distribution plus stationary power generation. Of this amount, two-thirds will go towards the hydrogen transportation marketplace.

In the past I’ve talked about both the European Hydrogen Highway system and the German H2 Mobility Plan for accelerating hydrogen car and fueling infrastructure. This is yet another commitment from the European Union towards making sure they are not only on track but pulling out from the pack in regard to hydrogen cars and infrastructure compared to the U. S. or Japan or any of the other smaller entities engaged in this early market.

While the U. S. struggles with its energy policy, still trying to figure out how to “plug the damn hole” from the Gulf oil spill, Europe is charging ahead with its clean energy initiatives and commitment towards a clean environment, energy independence and the creation of green jobs.

The European Union’s funding will go towards new technology for PEM fuel cells, improved reforming technology, and the development of early market materials handling for fuel cell vehicles.

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Yes, there have been a few commercial hydrogen fuel cell production cars built (such a by Honda and Daimler) but they have been for lease and not for sale. Yesterday I talked about hydrogen fuel cell Sysco forklifts and palette trucks powered by Plug Power Gendrive systems possibly being the first commercial production hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for sale on the market.

This was confirmed yesterday by Plug Power’s Teal Vivacqua and Sysco VP Gary M. Mills. Okay, perhaps forklifts and palette trucks are not as sexy as hydrogen cars. And, perhaps the fact that they operate in a warehouse away from the public eye also makes a difference along with the fact that not everyone will own one.

But, this is still an important milestone in the advancement of hydrogen vehicles. You see many people think that the first hydrogen fuel cell car of record was the 1966 General Motors Electrovan. And, they would be correct.

But, the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle actually predates this by 7 years. The first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle of record was a 1959 Allis-Chalmers farm tractor, developed by Harry Karl Ihrig.

This shows a couple of things. First, the challenge of putting hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road is a more monumental endeavor than putting other vehicles in action, because of the supporting infrastructure that needs to be built for cars.

Second, fleet vehicles such as forklifts and palette trucks prove the concept that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are practical not only from an environmental standpoint but from an economic standpoint as well.

And, just when you think that Plug Power’s first hydrogen fuel cell production vehicles for sale on the market in Texas is enough news, they are making even more news today. Plug Power will be expanding its sales of hydrogen fuel cell forklifts and palette trucks at the Walmart distribution center in Alberta, Canada.

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In May 2010, I wondered aloud whether or not fuel cell forklifts and palette trucks used in large warehouse settings, would in fact be the first commercial production hydrogen vehicles on the market.

Now, there is more evidence that this is so. In Houston, Texas Sysco Inc. opened their new 585,000-square-foot food distribution facility. They will be using numerous Plug Power Inc. Gendrive fuel cell forklifts and palette trucks.

According to the Plug Power press release, “…Sysco has deployed 98 GenDrive™ fuel cell units to power a fleet of The Raymond Corporation’s electric lift trucks at its new Houston, Texas distribution center. GenDrive product is placed into 72 Raymond Model 8400 pallet trucks and 26 Raymond Model 7400 Reach-Fork® trucks.”

And according to my interaction with Plug Power Marketing Communications Manager, Teal Vivacqua, “All the products being used at Sysco’s facility are commercial vehicles. The fuel cell powered material handling vehicles will be used as the sole lift truck fleet at its new distribution facility.”

Air Products will be supplying two indoor H2 refueling stations, strategically placed, that can fuel up a forklift or palette truck in about 2 minutes. The life of the fuel cells is expected to be up to 10 years.

No longer will Sysco, at least in this warehouse, be responsible for charging, changing and disposing of the toxic lead acid batteries found in similar vehicles in other facilities.

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It may not be a Coast Guard cutter, Navy frigate or one of the many large powerboats used by drug runners in the Florida keys or off the coast of California, but this week the ACTA Hidro hydrogen boat was launched at the Star European Championship in Viareggio, Italy (the Tuscany region).

The Star European Championship is a serious sailing competition that the ACTA Hidro had no part in. The ACTA Hidro was simply being shown as a demonstration of the company’s latest hydrogen technology.

In February 2010 I had talked about ACTA creating a hydrogen generator and fuel cell for marine applications. The ACTA Hidro is a demonstration of this technology for the recreational boating marketplace.

A full commercial launch of the hydrogen-powered marine vessel is expected at the Genoa Boat Show in October 2010. Check out the Italian video of this unique vessel.

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My most recent post about using ammonia borane as a chemical carrier of hydrogen for fuel cells was posted in September 2009. In fact, I’ve talked about the possibility of using ammonia borane several other times in the past as well.

On of the disadvantages of using ammonia borane as a chemical carrier of hydrogen is that it takes significant energy to re-hydrogenate the spent chemicals. Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Alabama are working on solving this issue.

Now, currently, researchers at Purdue University are using hydrothermolysis of ammonia borane (and water) to produce high yields of hydrogen. According to Purdue Professor Arvind Varma, “This is the first process to provide exceptionally high hydrogen yield values at near the fuel-cell operating temperatures without using a catalyst, making it promising for hydrogen-powered vehicles. We have a proof of concept.”

The new process will use waste heat from the fuel cells to separate the hydrogen from the ammonia borane in a reactor. This reactor will produce hydrogen at a safer compression (200 psi as opposed to 5,000 psi to 10,000 psi used in most current hydrogen vehicles).

The next step is for the researchers to scale up their design to work in a hydrogen fuel cell car and carry it at least 350 miles. Transporting an inert chemical compound such as ammonia borane will make a hydrogen refueling infrastructure much easier to build in comparison to using trucks with tanks of 10,000 psi or more on back (using the current gasoline infrastructure model).

So, you see, ammonia borane is not so boring after all.

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Yesterday, I talked about the APFCT hydrogen scooter taking a road trip around Taiwan. On this trip the empty hydrogen tank was swapped out for a fresh tank several times in less than 3 minutes.

This got me to thinking about worldwide scooter sales and where gasoline scooters could be replaced by hydrogen fuel cell scooters. The U. S. scooter sales per year in 2002 was an estimated at 69,000, up from 12,000 in 1997.

In 2004, U. S. scooter sales were estimated to be around 97,000. Scooter sales in Japan for 2009 are estimated to be around 20,000. In many Asian nations, scooter sales outpace car sales.

Scooters have been in use since the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and many of them have been used in tourist destinations.

According to eHotelier, the top 10 travel destinations in 2010 were:

1. London
2. Paris
3. Dubai
4. New York
5. Bangkok
6. Rome
7. Hong Kong
8. Barcelona
9. Sydney
10. Singapore

But, where I think hydrogen scooters will take off first will be popular beach cities and vacation islands where there are many shops already renting gasoline scooters to tourists. In some places like Bermuda, tourists cannot hire cars. Instead they have to choose to travel by scooter, bike or foot.

Hawaii is already piloting General Motors hydrogen vehicles and building an H2 fueling station infrastructure. Some of the most popular island tourist destinations where we could see the sales of hydrogen scooters flourish include Puerto Rico (and other Islands in the Caribbean), Crete, Bali and Tahiti.

Because Japan is building a hydrogen refueling station infrastructure for cars and starting to power homes using hydrogen fuel cells, I predict that Japan will also be a hotbed of hydrogen scooter activity.

The Taiwan experiment showed that hydrogen scooters can be used for long road trips if desired. But, most scooter riders only put short distances on their vehicles at one time and generally stay in the same location.

The ability to swap out tanks quickly and easily at home or on the road, make hydrogen scooters an attractive alternative that may beat hydrogen cars to commercialization.

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For a while now, I’ve talked about the U. S., Europe, Japan and perhaps even South Korea and key areas of developed for hydrogen vehicles and fueling stations. Now, I may have to include Taiwan into this category as well.

Asia Pacific Fuel Cell Technologies (APFCT) has just completed a 620 mile test drive of their hydrogen fuel cell scooter around the island of Taiwan off the coast of China. This sets a world record for distance for an on-road test drive for a fuel cell scooter.

And this test was not only of the scooter, but also of the mass production techniques to produce the scooter as well as the vendors who produce some of the parts that go into building the fuel cell scooter.

Asia Pacific Fuel Cell Technologies is also proposing a unique hydrogen fueling infrastructure to support the scooters. According to APFCT, “In hydrogen refueling, it continued using APFCT’s unique low- pressure metal hydride hydrogen canisters in combination with hydrogen exchange model. The hydrogen refueling and exchange model is similar to the exchange model of gas cylinders prevalently used by many Taiwan households. All hydrogen canisters will be manufactured and refueled with hydrogen in a central facility before being delivered to ‘exchange points’ which can be existing gas stations or convenient stores or other retail network by logistic companies.

“When hydrogen in canisters is depleted, the consumers just need to go to these exchange points to buy and exchange for canisters fully charged with hydrogen to plug in to fuel cell scooters. The whole process of changing canisters takes less than 1 minute. Once new canisters are plugged in, users can immediately ride their fuel cell scooters away, just like the usage of conventional scooters. Because at the present, the hydrogen canister exchange network has yet to be established in Taiwan, so for at this event, we used a tender van to support the hydrogen canister exchange on the trip and changed canisters at the road side whenever needed.”

So, basically, anyone familiar with exchanging canisters for a gas grille will be familiar with a similar concept for this fuel cell scooter. The last time I checked, Taiwan had one Ztek hydrogen fueling station in Tao-Yuan. This station would not be needed under the canister exchange idea.

And, this isn’t the only hydrogen development happening in Taiwan. In January 2007 I had talked about Mingdao University in Taiwan developing the MHV4 hydrogen car and in February 2007, I had talked about 100 hydrogen generators being shipped to Taiwan.

Like Japan, Iceland or Hawaii, Taiwan has an opportunity to become the first fully functioning hydrogen island with its relatively small land mass and its development of alternative fuel technologies. Hydrogen scooters have their rooters and my hope is that the APFCT fuel cell vehicle catches on for locals and tourists alike.

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Riversimple and its open source Hyrban hydrogen powered city car will be piloted on the streets in Leicester, UK. If all goes well according to the pilot study, expected to kick off in 2012, for a 12 month period, then Leicester is also the location where up to 5,000 Riversimple Hyrban cars will be built.

A while back I published a page and map about the budding UK Hydrogen Highway that is being built in both Scotland and Wales and presumably some locations in-between. At that time I had postulated that in order to connect north to south a hydrogen fueling station or two could be built in the Birmingham area (and perhaps Birmingham is one of the locations that hasn’t been announced yet).

But, Leicester is only a 35 miles east of Birmingham and could be used as one of the prime connecting routes from north to south instead of (or including) Birmingham.

According to the Riversimple press release, “The two seat vehicle was designed by a small team of British motorsport engineers and was built at Silverstone. It has a maximum cruising speed of 50 mph and a range on one tank of hydrogen of at least 200 miles. With a body made of lightweight composites it weighs only 350kg and by using novel design principles is able to do the equivalent of 300 miles per gallon. Hydrogen produces nothing but a few drops of water from the exhaust, although to achieve true ‘zero emission’ credentials the fuel must be produced from renewable energy sources too.”

The production versions of the Hyrbans will not be for sale, however, but will be for lease at about $300 – $350 per month USD plus around 22-cents per mile and not including hydrogen fuel charges.

In January 2010 I had talked about the Riversimple Hyrban plans being published online. An organization called 40fires.org is taking up the technical part of the challenge and if you want to participate in building this vehicle I suggest you check out the 40fires Urban Car technical design forums. You may just see the car that you’ve had a hand in on the roads very soon.

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