New Hydrogen Station Opens in Southern California

By Michael Ramsey

A new public hydrogen fueling station opened yesterday in Southern California, across the street from Toyota Motor Corp.’s sales headquarters that taps into an underground hydrogen pipeline to provide the gas.

It’s mainly novel because it taps directly into an existing pipeline. Toyota is leasing the land to Royal Dutch Shell and Air Products is providing equipment and maintenance. The pipeline gas also is provided by Air Products from its plants in Wilmington and Carson, Calif.

While this station will be almost entirely used by test fleets run by Toyota, Daimler AG, Hyundai Motor Co. and General Motors Co., there is a very small, but lucky group of regular consumers who get the deal of a lifetime. You see – the hydrogen is free.

And Honda Motor Co. has been leasing for several years the FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel powered electric car to a whopping 26 people in Southern California for $600 a month.

Honda is actively leasing the car, albeit very slowly, and plans to have about 200 on the road over the next few years. The $600 lease includes insurance and maintenance and essentially free fuel. Plus the Clarity is an electric car and has the fun, quiet and zippy performance of all electric cars. Most importantly, fuel cell vehicles qualify for California’s “white sticker” that gives access to the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, even if they are driving alone.

Sure, there are only a handful of hydrogen fueling spots in Southern California, and most are private, but for a person with the right commuting habits, this could be a good deal. So why isn’t Honda making more of them?

Honda is certainly losing money on every car. In 2006, Ford Motor Co. publicly said their test hydrogen fuel cell Focus cost about $1 million a piece to make and other automakers gave similar estimates. Toyota Motor Corp. executives have said as recently as January that costs have come down by a factor of 10 – and privately they agree it costs around $100,000 today to make one. Toyota, which is planning to come out with its own fuel cell model in 2015, is hoping to get the cost down to about $50,000 by then.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, the chief engineer for Toyota, said fuel cell technology has advanced more in the past five years than electric battery technology and he expects the advances to be greater in the next five years than with batteries as well. Fuel cells convert hydrogen and oxygen into water and as part of the process create electricity.

Honda won’t say what its costs are to make the Clarity, but since they are only leasing it and not retailing it after the lease, it’s safe to say they aren’t making money on it no matter what it cost.

Yesterday’s announcement served as a curiosity in the midst of daily announcements about plans for electric car plug-in stations. The political winds and funding aren’t behind hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen, though, hasn’t been entirely forgotten as an alternative fuel source. Many company executives privately think it is ultimately the only sustainable solution for automotive transportation looking decades out. Hydrogen can be made from water or natural gas, it can refuel a car in a few minutes and give hundreds of miles of range on a tank, and it produces no tailpipe emissions.

Source;
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/05/11/free-gas-anyone-new-hydrogen-station-opens/?mod=google_news_blog