Skip to main content

Honda begins sales of fuel cell car

Honda Motor has begun to sell its all-new fuel cell vehicle (FCV) in Japan, the Clarity Fuel Cell; its first-year sales target is 200, mainly through lease sales mainly to local government bodies or businesses Honda has already been working with to popularise FCVs. Making the fuel cell powertrain more compact using original Honda technologies and fitting it entirely under the hood of the car enabled Honda to create an FCV to carry five passengers rather than the usual four. Combined with the improved
March 11, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
1683 Honda Motor has begun to sell its all-new fuel cell vehicle (FCV) in Japan, the Clarity Fuel Cell; its first-year sales target is 200, mainly through lease sales mainly to local government bodies or businesses Honda has already been working with to popularise FCVs.

Making the fuel cell powertrain more compact using original Honda technologies and fitting it entirely under the hood of the car enabled Honda to create an FCV to carry five passengers rather than the usual four.

Combined with the improved efficiency of the powertrain and a reduced energy requirement for driving, a 70 MPa high-pressure hydrogen storage tank installed in the vehicle provides a cruising range of approximately 750 km (470 miles), an increase of approximately 30 per cent compared to the previous FCV model, says Honda. The company also claims that the hydrogen tank can be refilled in approximately three minutes, an ease of use equivalent to that of a gasoline-powered vehicle.

During the first year of sales, Honda will collect information about the vehicle in use before beginning sales to individual customers.

Honda says it is planning to introduce the Clarity Fuel Cell to Europe and the US before the end of 2016.

Related Content

  • April 25, 2013
    Diverse development of tolling business models
    A diversity of tolling business models offers a wider toolbox of highway finance options, as the IBTTA’s Patrick Jones explains. The business models for America’s tolled highways have gone through several different evolutions over the last 75 years, reflecting a succession of shifts in transportation policy and politics, financing and funding models, urban patterns, customer needs, and technology. And with more and more decision-makers expressing renewed interest in tolling, it’s that very diversity that ma
  • January 24, 2012
    Improve and increase mass transit systems to minimise congestion
    Rather looking to solve congestion by spreading the load, perhaps we need to look at concentrating it. Michael L. Sena writes. We humans were made to walk and run at embarrassingly slow speeds by comparison with other, more fleet-footed organisms. The sea is not our natural habitat and we were definitely not designed to fly unaided. Nevertheless, humankind has evolved a method of living during the past century that is dependent on transporting its members over very long distances during relatively short per
  • February 1, 2012
    Advanced in-vehicle user interface - future developments
    Dave McNamara and Craig Simonds, Autotechinsider LLC, look at human-machine interface development out to 2015. The US auto industry is going through the worst crisis it has faced since the Great Depression. But it has embraced technologies that will produce the best-possible driving experience for the public. Ford was the first OEM to announce in-car internet radio and SYNC, its signature-branded User Interface (UI), is held up as the shining example of change embracement.
  • September 25, 2015
    Hydrogen Mobility Europe project launched
    A coalition of European partners has launched the Hydrogen Mobility Europe project (H2ME), co-funded with US$36 million from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU). The project will support the deployment of 200 fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), 125 fuel cell range-extended electric (FC RE-EVs) commercial vans and 29 new hydrogen refuelling stations (HRS) in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK by 2019. H2ME is based around an