High Hopes for Hydrogen?
By Jim Motavalli
Aug 01, 2007
In almost a decade of test driving hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars, I began to recognize a familiar pattern. The drive itself was short, usually a round or two around a race track or a closed-road course. I was once flown all the way to Japan to drive a Honda FCX about half a mile through a parking lot. Sitting in the passenger seat was an engineer with a laptop and a clipboard, nervously watching for malfunctions.
Fortunately, those days are gone. A newly confident Honda gave me the keys to an FCX for a whole week, and I didn’t have to give the spare bedroom over to an engineer. The car performed flawlessly on my daily round, which included delivering my daughter to her school concert. Her fellow musicians took turns sitting in the passenger seat when they heard the FCX was worth $2 million. Now the new FCX Concept model is on test tracks, and Honda says it will actually be selling some in 2008.
