The plug-in CR-V will be Honda’s next hydrogen-powered car, which will go on sale in 2024. Honda and GM worked together to make the new fuel cell system. Honda said it would last longer and cost one-third less than the fuel cell stack in the Clarity. By 2025, Honda plans to make 2,000 of its next-generation fuel cell system each year. Some of these will likely be used by business partners. The next car Honda makes that runs on hydrogen will be a plug-in version of the new CR-V. The automaker started talking about this replacement for its previous H2 vehicle, the Clarity Fuel Cell, which was phased out in 2021. The powertrain is now beginning to take shape. Honda said in 2022 that its next-generation fuel cell vehicle, based on the CR-V, would go on sale in North America and Japan in 2024. The fuel cell system and drive unit will be combined under the front hood of the hydrogen-powered SUV. It will have two H2 tanks in the back, an intelligent power unit under the seats, and a bright power unit under the front hood. It will use a fuel cell system made with GM’s help. The CR-plug-in V’s battery is so tiny that it wasn’t shown on Honda’s rough sketch of the upcoming car and won’t be able to power it for very long. Honda says the hydrogen-powered CR-V will be able to send power to other places. Who is going to buy this CR-V? Honda has yet to say if the new H2 CR-V will be sold in states other than California. Right now, the Clarity Fuel Cell can only be leased in California. On the other hand, Honda has confirmed that the fuel cell CR-V will be made in Ohio’s Performance Manufacturing Center starting in 2024. These cars will be shipped to Japan. Honda hasn’t said much about the car’s other features, but this week it did say something about the CR-next-generation V’s fuel system. Ryan Harty, senior manager and division leader of American Honda Motor Company’s energy solution business division, says the new system starts “significantly faster” in subfreezing temperatures and lasts more than twice as long (under -22 degrees F). Harty says that the next-generation system costs two-thirds less to make than Clarity’s fuel cell system, which is no longer in use. The drop is due to “innovative materials” for electrodes and a plan to make more units. A Honda spokesperson told Car and Driver that the model had 2,116 leases in the United States, but the company has never said how many Clarity Fuel Cell vehicles it sold. But Honda only sold 41,000 Clarity cars over five years, most of which were plug-in hybrids, so the company only needs to increase production slightly to take advantage of economies of scale. By 2025, Honda and GM plan to make about 2,000 of their next-generation fuel cell systems each year at the Fuel Cell System Manufacturing Center in Michigan, which they own together. By 2030, Honda wants to make 60,000 of this unit or a better one every year. Honda has yet to say who it will work with to create or develop the next-generation system, but it plans to make it cheaper and more powerful. Harty said, “We set additional goals to cut costs in half and make the system last twice as long as the next-generation system.” We want the next generation of systems to be as easy to use and inexpensive to own as diesel engines. Trying to Get This Technology Out There Honda said it wants to put fuel cell systems in cars and sees them as essential parts of a society with no carbon emissions. The automaker is looking for partners to test them in stationary power plants, commercial vehicles, and construction equipment. Harty says that Honda is actively looking for partners in North America to work on commercial trucks that run on fuel cells. Together with Dongfeng Motors, Honda is currently testing hydrogen trucks in China. Before April 2024, experimenting with Isuzu will start in Japan. Honda will begin selling its fuel cell system to partners in the transportation and industrial sectors around the middle of the 2020s. Harty says that the main goal is to show that the fuel cell power train is technically able to help not only Honda but also other companies reach their goals of being sustainable and producing no carbon emissions. “We have to build the business ecosystem and hydrogen infrastructure around that” so that these customers can succeed.
