Honda Solar Fueling Station (image credit: EarthTechling)
What if you never had to visit the gas station again? In fact, what if you could tap into alternative fuels simply by pulling into your own garage?
Honda Motors is about to make your dreams come true! The company announced its new Honda Solar Hydrogen Station this week to accolades from consumers and commentators alike.
According to its official press release, the release that was unveiled at the Los Angeles Center of Honda R&D Americas, Inc., is intended for use as a “home refueling appliance capable of an overnight refill of fuel cell electric vehicles.”
Compact and sleek, the single integrated solar hydrogen station will easily fit in a residential garage and can produce enough hydrogen over an 8-hour fill for daily commuting in a fuel cell electric vehicle (approximately 10,000 miles per year).
In case you haven’t heard about the Honda Clarity – a hydrogen fuel cell EV that only emits H2O, you don’t know what you are missing! The Honda FCX Clarity can travel up to 240 miles between refueling, which is much farther than the average commuter drives in a single day:
Recharge your Fuel Cell EV with a Solar Fueling Station at Home! (image credit: Inside Line)
If you own a Honda Clarity – or any other vehicle that runs on hydrogen fuels – you’ll love the Honda Solar Hydrogen Station! Its an all-in-one electrolyzer and compressor that not only conveniently fits in a residential garage, but runs on solar energy. And, this model is compact, due to the combination of the two components.
In fact, the elimination of a separate compressor is the first in the world for hydrogen fueling stations. Honda’s prototype even improves fuel efficiency by an astonishing 25%! Compact, cheap and convenient – the three “Cs” that automobile owners and consumers in the new decade are craving. And Honda is delivering with both its solar fueling station and the Honda Clarity.
Can you imagine never having to go to the fuel station again? Sign me up!
Tags: alternative fuels, fuel cell electric vehicle, honda clarity, honda fcx clarity, honda motors, honda solar, hydrogen fuels, hydrogen station, hydrogen vehicle, solar fueling station
In the interest of “clarity”: The recharging station itself may be compact enough to “easily fit in a residential garage,” but if you look to the right of the car in the top photo, you can see part of the solar array that powers it. A bit of Googling and some quick calcs shows that it’s a 6 kW array of 48 Honda Soltec thin-film solar modules, each one 4.6′ x 2.6′ in size, for a total array size of 579 square feet! A 6 kW array is plenty big enough to recharge an all-electric car, with greater overall efficiency than the hydrogen loop.
However, the energy in an electric car is stored in batteries, which is full of acid and again bad for the environment!