Honda FCX Clarity 2010 Review

Honda FCX Clarity

What we liked
>> Real-world practicality
>> Appealing looks and presence
>> Eerie, science-fictionesque air compressor noise

Not so much
>> Not affordable as a production car... yet
>> Packaging compromises: four seats, small boot, centre console without storage
>> Needs hydrogen refuelling infrastructure first

Overall rating: 4.0/5.0
Engine/Drivetrain/Chassis: 4.5/5.0
Price, Packaging and Practicality: 3.5/5.0
(price is unknown but could be around mid-$60k if it ever went on sale in Oz)
Safety: 4.0/5.0
Behind the wheel: 3.5/5.0
X-factor: 4.5/5.0

About our ratings

Car of the future seems such a cliché, but it's the expression that best serves Honda's FCX Clarity -- the car that has brought hydrogen fuel cell technology closer to production reality than anything else to date.

The Carsales Network, in Germany to drive both Honda's Insight and CR-Z also had the opportunity to drive the manufacturer's formidable fuel cell sedan. Honda has shipped two of them from the US to Europe where they've been flogged up and down autobahns since late last year and have notched up around 14,000km in the gentle hands of journalists.

A four-door sedan with handsome but conventional looks, the Clarity presents as a car about Camry/Accord-sized but far more radical, in a technological sense. That aside, the Clarity won't offend or disturb prospective customers with either its looks or the way it operates.

Power delivery in the large sedan with its on-board hydrogen fuel cell was unrelenting from launch to top speed. It was also eye-opening for its capacity to haul a 1625kg sedan along at autobahn speeds.

According to the power meter, the engine was developing just 60kW to cruise at around 160km/h -- the car's effective top speed. Based on the Clarity's performance in a straight line, it's likely that the final drive has been geared down to take advantage of the electric motor's ability to run up higher than all road-going piston motors, although Honda personnel couldn't say what the ratio was.

As already mentioned, the Clarity delivers strong launch feel and linear acceleration right up to its ceiling speed and, in fact, it feels like it would pull beyond 160km/h, but we didn't get the opportunity to try. Honda advises that the car is driven through just the one reduction gear, so an actual gearbox could enhance the car's performance further, should Honda care to adopt a multi-ratio transmission for the Clarity down the track.

For NVH, a faint sound of the electric drive motor operating was frequently swamped by the much more dominant, theremin-like quality of the electric-driven air compressor that works overtime when the driver is drawing on not only battery power, but additional electric power generated by the fuel cell.

Honda intends to engineer this noise out, but for a short period at least, it's entertaining. The air compressor, which can also be heard as a low hum once the car is 'started', but before it moves off, provides a real sense of science fiction theatre. For a child of the 1970s, it's like driving Commander Straker's car from the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson TV series, 'UFO'.

In brief, and bearing in mind that our drive took place in a foreign country and over very well maintained roads, the Clarity impressed for its cohesive design.

It's as solid and well finished as any volume-production Honda; interior packaging is probably at the same general standard as Honda's American Accord (built in Thailand for the Aussie market). Seats are comfy and supportive, although there are only two in the rear, limiting the Clarity to four-seat capacity only. In between the two rear seats is a fold-down armrest with integrated cupholders.

The steering wheel is a small but handy diameter, the controls are typically Honda-like -- ie: busy -- but not beyond comprehension with familiarity. Honda engineers settled on a location for the fuel cell stack under the centre armrest for the front seats, so where there would be a storage bin with a lid doubling as the armrest, in the Clarity, forget about it.

In the boot, the large (hydrogen) gas tank occupies a substantial part of the volume, probably about equivalent or perhaps even a little more than the space required by battery storage in the boot of Toyota's Camry Hybrid. That could change if the Clarity were ever to make it to Australia, where it will have to be equipped with a spacesaver spare at the very least. This US-spec car doesn't even get that.

Brakes were a bit sudden in the Clarity and were the only element to take the shine off the Clarity's smoothness and refinement. It was hard to squeeze the brake pedal in a way that would smoothly translate from acceleration or coasting to outright deceleration. Presumably the regenerative braking contributes to that.

Ride comfort was good and well controlled. Handling and steering are in the vein of 'nouveau American' (not as wallowy as 30 years ago, not as sharp as we expect of cars here), but the car could be punted hard enough and it always felt dynamically safe for the type of car it is: one that is a luxury large car, not one that is a semi-experimental powertrain project.

Adopting the split rear window of the Insight, the CR-Z and Toyota's Prius, the Clarity provides a good field of vision to the rear, but the glass in the bootlid is so heavily tinted, you may not even notice that it's transparent from outside the car.

The Clarity boasts a foot-operated parking brake, which would be regarded by many as conventional these days for an American-market car. There's also a curious drive selector (we hesitate to call it a gear selector when there's only one reduction gear for the car) fitted to the right of the Clarity's steering wheel. It's like the flowing gear knob from the Prius meets the column selector of larger Benz models.

There are three modes, Reverse, Drive and Neutral, with a separate button on the dash and located below the selector for Park. It doesn't take long to learn how to use it, but it won't provide sequential manual shifting, plainly.

If you were worried however about the lack of engine braking available in this car, fear not; there's engine braking there to a degree with the electric motor in regenerative mode (yes, the Clarity works much like a hybrid or an electric vehicle except it also has its own powerstation on board, as one of the Honda blokes explained). In addition to the regenerative braking through the electric motor, the Clarity also features auto-stop/start... sort of...

Without an internal combustion engine that needs to keep running or else requires a sophisticated system to turn it on and off on demand (at traffic lights for instance), the Clarity's electric motor only runs when the car needs to move.

The fuel cell can operate independently of the electric motor, generating electricity to store in the battery or to use immediately for motive power, but there's no power consumption when the Clarity is at standstill, unless it's to drive ancillary devices such as air conditioning, audio, lights, etc.

That's the interesting thing about the Clarity: for all its expensive fuel cell components, it's actually rather simple. There's no twin-clutch/CVT/epicyclic transmission, there's no hideously complex multi-valve internal combustion engine either. Even with the fuel cell, the Clarity has fewer moving parts than the V6 Accord with its Variable Cylinder Management, for example.

Near the end of our drive program, we spent at least ten minutes changing lanes constantly on an autobahn and accelerating hard to merge or diverge. The Clarity coped with everything demanded of it and, tellingly, we soon forgot that the Clarity is a highly sophisticated motor vehicle that relies on powertrain technology that's at least five years in the future before it reaches volume production.

The car itself offers striking looks and real-world comfort, but it's the technology that delivers the real wow factor. This is a car that's so good, we should be demanding the technology and infrastructure from our governments and corporations now, so we can be driving cars like this within five years. Not because it's green and it's a more elegant solution than hybrids, with a longer range and no reliance on non-renewable energy whatsoever, but because it's the future and it meets any driver's demands for power and efficiency.

Footnote: Only in Germany... we drove the two fuel cell Hondas to a local service station to refill the hydrogen (see separate story). It was a media set-up to demonstrate how easily the Clarity can be refuelled with the 'wasserstoff'. Well, in the tradition of best-laid plans, we had to queue up and wait for the pumps to be available to both cars, because one of the pumps was being used by an Opel-badged Chevy Equinox experimental fuel cell vehicle and its place was taken by a Mercedes-Benz F-Cell.
But you know what? It's like revisiting the early years of the 20th Century. Petrol was not sold on every corner and you might have to drive miles to find a pharmacy selling 'motor spirit'. Look forward to the next few years, we're pioneering again.

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