- Honda’s next hydrogen-powered vehicle will be a plug-in version of the CR-V, arriving in 2024.
- Honda will build 2000 units of its next-gen fuel cell system a year by 2025, but industry partners will likely use some.
Honda’s next hydrogen-powered vehicle will be a version of the new CR-V with plug-in capability. The automaker started talking last year about this follow-up to the company’s previous H2 vehicle, the Clarity Fuel Cell, which was discontinued in 2021. However, now the picture surrounding the powertrain is becoming a bit clearer. In 2022, Honda announced that its next-generation fuel cell vehicle, based on the CR-V, will go on sale in 2024 in North America and Japan.
The hydrogen-powered SUV will use a fuel cell system co-developed with GM and will have two H2 tanks in the rear of the vehicle, an intelligent power unit under the seats and a fuel cell system and drive unit mounted as one under the front hood. The battery in the plug-in part of the equation won’t power the CR-V for too many miles and is small enough that it didn’t merit space on Honda’s vague diagram of the upcoming vehicle. Honda said the hydrogen CR-V would also have a power export function. Honda remains coy about further details regarding the vehicle itself but did announce more information about the CR-V’s next-generation fuel system this week.
Ryan Harty, senior manager and division lead of the energy solution business division at American Honda Motor Company, said that the new system is more than twice as durable and has “significantly faster” startup times at frigid temperatures (under -22 degrees F). Also, Harty said, compared to the fuel cell system found in the now-defunct Clarity, the next-gen system costs two-thirds less to build.