The future is just around turn two

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How to Fill it Up

If you were to drive an FCX to work you’d have to fill it up around every 350 miles – not a bad range. To do so, however, you’d need to make friends with Al the maintenance guy at the local city yard, ‘cause that’s where most hydrogen refueling centers are. It’s a simple enough affair with two cables: one for ground and the other for fueling. It’s just that you get this feeling that if you do it wrong, er, things might blow up. But that’s today. For tomorrow, Honda is developing a Home Energy Station that will extract hydrogen from a home’s natural gas supply. The problem is that carbon dioxide spews forth when you produce hydrogen this way, which sort of defeats the purpose. Honda engineers are working on zero-carbon solutions.

What's Inside

Hydrogen fuel cell stacks are only the beginning when it comes to FCX innovation. Other features include seat upholstery and door linings made from what Honda calls “Bio-Fabric,” a corn-based material that's soft to touch and offers what Honda claims to be durability and resistance to sunlight damage. Other improvements include shift-by-wire – not that great, yet -- and a newly designed instrument panel with easy-to-read green and yellow graphic “ball” that shows hydrogen consumption.