Honda FCX Clarity
Perhaps obscured by questions of practicality and cost is the fact -- and it is a fact -- that the FCX Clarity is the most beautiful car to ever wear the big H on the nose. It’s just gorgeous, a big garnet-red teardrop falling from the cheek of the future, a sweet stanza of robot-written poetry. -- Dan Neil (Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times)
Of the 200 FCX Claritys Honda intends to build, it will lease almost all of them in Southern California. The carmaker won’t say what the program cost for the vehicle is, but I estimate about $400 million, which pencils out to $2 million per vehicle. That makes my four-door test car the most valuable automobile I’ve ever driven by a margin of about one whole Ferrari 430. -- Dan Neil (Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times)
With the small fuel cell stack (about the size of a desktop PC) situated between the front seats, and the lithium-ion battery and hydrogen tank stuffed over the rear axle, the car’s cabin has room to stretch out. The FCX Clarity is huge on the inside and the trunk is a spacious 11 cubic feet. The whole is encapsulated in singlet of wind-swept modernism. -- Dan Neil (Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times)
To underscore the car’s eco-friendly mission, Honda uses petroleum-free resins and bio-based fabrics to construct the interior, and it really is wonderful stuff. Rich textures abound, including a tasteful wainscoting of walnut on the dash and doors. God only knows what all this costs. -- Dan Neil (Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times)
How does the FCX Clarity drive? Exactly as you’d expect an electric Honda Accord to: eerily smooth, flawless in operation, confident and lively. The whack-bang of an internal-combustion engine, with the myriad second-order vibrations and gear whine, is supplanted by the ghostly murmurings of distant electrons, and so the gestalt of the car is serene, even tranquilizing. -- Dan Neil (Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times)
