Home Made Refueling Station for Honda FCX Clarity

Honda has started producing the FCX Clarity, the world’s first commercial hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. The FCX Clarity has an electric motor that runs from a battery charged by a hydrogen fuel cell. The car can get a combined fuel efficiency of about 72 miles per kg of H2 which, according to Honda’s estimations, is the equivalent of getting about 74 mpg on a gasoline powered car. The car has an autonomy of 280 miles before it has to be refilled with hydrogen. Honda also plans to make the cars commercially available in Japan. The cars will be leased on a three-year basis for about $600 per month, according to Honda.

They say hydrogen cars aren’t going to be mainstream anytime soon. Honda officials estimate they will lease only about 200 FCX Clarity fuel cell cars over the next three years. In order to qualify for the lease program, would-be owners will first have to meet the criteria of living near a hydrogen refueling station, according to Honda. As part of the lease, Honda will provide any necessary service or maintenance on the vehicle. The insurance companies would not do so due to the enormous costs they would have to bear.

Ok, this is as far as anyone talked about these days about Honda FCX Clarity. Now I’m putting up a suggestion: why is everyone so blind a narrow-minded to see that we can extract the hydrogen from water!? Why doesn’t anyone realize that you don’t need a transport infrastructure to store a few liters of hydrogen, and buy that hydrogen at a high price (I bet it would compete with gasoline’s price)?

Isn’t there some company smart enough to make a safe home hydrogen refueling system? What could be that hard? You would only need a fitted compressor, two wires and some electrolyte (salt, for example), and you could put the whole thing in your backyard! Or build it on your car! Of course, measures have to be taken to secure everything, so there isn’t the danger of explosion, as it would be a big one, but the same measures apply to the car’s own hydrogen tank! Wouldn’t there be a possibility to convert our holy water into electricity? Batteries are still expensive, and one day maybe we won’t be needing hydrogen at all, but until then hydrogen fuel cells are the best thing on the market, with large energy capacity storage in a small space! After all, hydrogen cars are electric cars in their essence!

So… why bother making another hydrogen refueling station? We have hydrogen everywhere… We have the technology, people, so let’s make it work for everyone!