Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005 | 9:24 a.m.
Las Vegas will be the hot and dry testing ground for Honda's hydrogen fuel cell-powered car for the next year.
The Las Vegas City Council on Tuesday voted 6-0 to lease two Honda FCX cars for a combined $14,400 a year. One of the cars will arrive Friday, and the other on Monday.
The city is getting the cars at a bargain price -- the current market price is more than $1 million each -- because the company wants to see how the cars fare in a Las Vegas summer.
Cory Welch, a senior project manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., said the fuel-cell powered cars in Las Vegas will be watched to see how a plastic membrane in the cell reacts to arid conditions.
The membranes, which are used to produce electricity in the cell, need to be humidified to work, Welch said.
"The dry air could damage the membrane and then it wouldn't work," he said. "So it's good to test the fuel cells in all sorts of climates."
Honda put the first hydrogen fuel-cell cars into the general public's hands two years ago when the Los Angeles city officials took two of the cars, Stephen Ellis, alternative fuel vehicles manager for Honda, said.
Since then, Honda has put two cars in Albany, N.Y., to see how the cars perform in frigid temperatures, he said.
"Vegas brings the opposite of that with the extreme heat and arid conditions," Ellis said.
Honda also has another five hydrogen-powered cars on the road in Los Angeles, two in San Francisco, and one in Chula Vista, Calif., which is south of San Diego.
The Honda FCX is a four-passenger, two-door car that can reach speeds of 95 mph, travel 150 miles on a full tank and is Honda's first hydrogen-powered car that doesn't carry the prototype label, Ellis said.
Welch, whose lab is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, said "fuel cell technology is very promising ... and provides us with a path toward a renewable energy source."
The fuel cells make electricity by combining hydrogen with oxygen from the air. That reaction releases electricity and produces the vehicles only emission: water vapor, Welch said.
Fuel cells have been used for 40 years in the space program to provide electricity and make water, Welch said, and their use in vehicles really gained steam in the early 1990s when advances in technology allowed for smaller and less expensive fuel cells.
Almost every auto manufacturer has produced a hydrogen-powered car, he said, although Ellis estimated less than 100 are on the road worldwide.
Dan Hyde, Las Vegas' fleet and transportation services manager, said one of the new cars will be used for parking enforcement and he's not sure yet what the other will be used for.
"But we want to put them in high-use situations," he said.
Hyde said he has been trying to bring a fuel-cell car to the city since a hydrogen fueling station opened at Cheyenne Avenue and Buffalo Drive two years ago. That station cost $10.8 million, and the federal government and private investors split the cost evenly.
The station is used from time to time when hydrogen-powered vehicles travel through Las Vegas, he said.
Councilman Gary Reese noted that this won't be the first time Las Vegas has ventured into trying alternative-fuel vehicles.
Of the 996 vehicles in Las Vegas's fleet, many are already powered by alternative fuels, including 187 that run on natural gas, about 200 powered by bio-diesel fuel and 19 hybrid vehicles that run on batteries and gasoline.
Ellis said that for now Honda's fuel-cell cars aren't available to just anyone, but expects that someday the general public will be able to buy one.
Welch said the Department of Energy hopes the cars will be available to the general consumer by 2015.
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