Drishtikone
This is an incredible progress.. maybe we can see the cars become fuel cell powered within our lifespans… and the dependence on Oil disappear altogether!
Honda leased the FCX fuel-cell car to the Spallino family at the end of June, part of an experiment to see how the cars would hold up to daily driving demands. The New York Times reported that the car cost about $1 million, making it far more expensive than even the many luxury cars that populate Southern California roads and highways.
“When the cars pull up to me, the Porsches and the Bentleys and all that, I just sort of say, well, that’s nice, but for what this costs I could buy 10 of those,” Jon Spallino told the newspaper.
Despite the cost, the Spallino family is paying $500 a month to lease the FCX from Honda. A Honda executive told the paper that it was important that the family contribute even a relatively modest portion of the vehicle cost in order to get valuable feedback from them.
“The feedback from these consumers will be very astute,” Ben Knight, a vice president for research and development at Honda, told the newspaper. “An individual that is paying out of their own pocket for a vehicle will be very conscious of the value received, and the vehicle limitations.”
Fuel-cell use hydrogen stored on board and oxygen to produce electricity, leaving only water vapor as a tailpipe emission. They have been around for more than a century and have been used in some commercial vehicle fleets, such as city buses, in earlier tests. Still cost-efficient mobile fuel cells still remain out of reach of the industry at this point.
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