Automotive Engineering - May 2023 - 38

HONDA'S
HONDA FUEL CELLS FEATURE
H2
PROGRESS
" There are exciting
new features coming
that will contribute
to peoples' lives in
new ways. "
the worst times and are contributing energy to the grid
system at the best times. Our relationship with energy
for the last 100 years has been: I put gas in a big hole in
the side of the car that gets pumped through a pipe to
my propulsion unit that carries me and the other occupants
in the car and whatever cargo I have. That gas has
one energy value: It has the value of the energy when I
pumped it into my tank and only that value.
Electricity is very different. We have to change our
relationship with energy for mobility dramatically,
because our electricity value fluctuates throughout
the day. We can arbitrage that on behalf of our customers
if we're managing that energy and if they
trust us a little bit. We can now put money in their
pocket by saying, hey, I want you to charge overnight
when you're taking excess grid energy. And I want
you to charge during the day when the sun's shining
and nobody's using electricity. Top off your battery.
You tell me what your comfort level is. I'm going to
leave you margin and I never want to take away from
your mobility.
You want to be able to go to lunch on a whim or you
Fuel cell vehicle refueling station
installed earlier at Honda's Torrance facility.
If you've got a " gas " station with cars expecting to fill up with
" electricity " in five minutes, you are going to need a generation
plant somewhere close that's going to be providing all the electricity
those cars will require.
This is a multiple-variable equation, and it's not a simple equation.
One, battery electric cars will all have 80 kWh or larger batteries.
Let's say 80- to 120-kWh batteries. Where I'm headed with this: We
will have high-range vehicles with high-capacity batteries, yet our
driving behavior will not change dramatically. Most trips will be less
than 25 miles, which means we can look at the batteries in vehicles
as an energy resource we can manage throughout the day. Once we
have bi-directional charging, which is only a couple of years away,
we're almost there. That's on the foreseeable horizon.
Once we can use energy that goes in and out of those vehicles frequently,
we've got a situation where cars are not drawing demand at
38 May 2023
want to make sure you can pick up your kid from soccer
practice. You figure out what margins you need
and you let us manage the rest of that energy remotely
from somewhere else, and we're going to put money
in your pocket every day. And we're also going to
reduce peak demand, because we're going to supply
energy to the grid when it's needed. And we'll use that
low-demand energy to top off those batteries.
Just imagine how different our relationship with energy
for mobility is in that circumstance. From our perspective
we have, as an industry, said to our customers
for 120 years, 'Thank you for buying a car. Now you go
pick your energy source.'
We don't have to do that now.
Now we can have a relationship with our customers
where we help them manage their energy needs
throughout the vehicle life. We can put money in their
pocket. We can offset the cost of ownership.
There are so many things we can contribute to our
customers' lives if we earn their trust.
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
HONDA
Automotive Engineering - May 2023

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