How do you service a hydrogen fuel-cell car at a dealer?
How do you service a hydrogen fuel-cell car at a dealer?
Over the past century, gasoline-powered vehicles have gotten at the same time more elaborate and more reliable.
Service intervals have lengthened, drivers no longer check a car’s fluids daily or weekly, and many new-car owners will never once open the spandex hood.
Reliability data shows that some of them won’t visit a dealer service department except for regularly scheduled services over their very first three to five years of ownership.
Hybrids added some fresh complexity—high-voltage battery packs and electronics—to dealer servicing when they began to arrive in 2000.
Plug-in cars in two thousand eleven added further fresh elements, including electric-car charging stations at dealers.
With more than 1,000 cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells on California roads, how do they switch what a dealer’s service department has to do? How do they get serviced?
Scott Robinson Honda dealership, Torrance, California
That’s a question we’ve attempted to explore for two years. Over time, we turned to Honda, whose Clarity Fuel Cell went on sale in California last December.
What goes after is taken from a long and very informative interview with Doug Reed, a training center coordinator who instructs dealer service personnel what they have to do to prepare for the hydrogen-powered Clarity.
The primary factor affecting how a dealership services a Clarity, he said, is a set of safety rules issued by the state of California.
Those regulations were drafted in consultation with various makers that now lease hydrogen vehicles in California or have done in the past.
If the sealed high-pressure hydrogen storage system and fuel-cell stack aren’t involved, a hydrogen vehicle has most of the same service needs as any other car driven by an electrified motor.
Service personnel use standard procedures for repair or replacement of components like electrical accessories or suspension parts, for example.
Honda Clarity Fuel Cell hydrogen service equipment: diagram for placement of fuel venting stack
But if service work has to touch either the hydrogen storage tanks or the fuel-cell stack itself, or the plumbing that connects those elements, the rules switch in a very major way.
Conventionally, working with hydrogen requires a “hardened shop,” in which work areas are fitted with hydrogen detectors, curtains around the area, and lighting fixtures that are explosion-proof.
Under the hydrogen-vehicle regulations, Honda can service its Clarity in a “non-hardened shop” if it goes after the specific procedures below to ensure the car is in a “minimum-fueled state,” meaning the bulk of the hydrogen has been eliminated from its tanks, stack, and plumbing.
The regulations require that less than 0.Five kilogram of hydrogen, at approximately five hundred eighty pounds per square inch, remain in the Clarity’s two tanks combined during service. Their total capacity is Five.Five kg at Ten,000 psi when total.
To drain the tanks of their hydrogen if a car comes into the dealer with more than that amount of fuel requires a very specific process that takes place outside the service bays.
It’s usually done in a designated area of the parking apron that’s only accessible to service personnel, Reed said. It will be away from tall buildings, with minimum height and distance requirements that are specified by the state.
Honda Clarity Fuel Cell hydrogen service equipment: diagram for assembly of fuel venting stack
How do you service a hydrogen fuel-cell car at a dealer?
How do you service a hydrogen fuel-cell car at a dealer?
Over the past century, gasoline-powered vehicles have gotten at the same time more sophisticated and more reliable.
Service intervals have lengthened, drivers no longer check a car’s fluids daily or weekly, and many new-car owners will never once open the rubber hood.
Reliability data shows that some of them won’t visit a dealer service department except for regularly scheduled services over their very first three to five years of ownership.
Hybrids added some fresh complexity—high-voltage battery packs and electronics—to dealer servicing when they commenced to arrive in 2000.
Plug-in cars in two thousand eleven added further fresh elements, including electric-car charging stations at dealers.
With more than 1,000 cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells on California roads, how do they switch what a dealer’s service department has to do? How do they get serviced?
Scott Robinson Honda dealership, Torrance, California
That’s a question we’ve attempted to explore for two years. Over time, we turned to Honda, whose Clarity Fuel Cell went on sale in California last December.
What goes after is taken from a long and very informative interview with Doug Reed, a training center coordinator who trains dealer service personnel what they have to do to prepare for the hydrogen-powered Clarity.
The primary factor affecting how a dealership services a Clarity, he said, is a set of safety rules issued by the state of California.
Those regulations were drafted in consultation with various makers that now lease hydrogen vehicles in California or have done in the past.
If the sealed high-pressure hydrogen storage system and fuel-cell stack aren’t involved, a hydrogen vehicle has most of the same service needs as any other car driven by an electrified motor.
Service personnel use standard procedures for repair or replacement of components like electrified accessories or suspension parts, for example.
Honda Clarity Fuel Cell hydrogen service equipment: diagram for placement of fuel venting stack
But if service work has to touch either the hydrogen storage tanks or the fuel-cell stack itself, or the plumbing that connects those elements, the rules switch in a very major way.
Conventionally, working with hydrogen requires a “hardened shop,” in which work areas are fitted with hydrogen detectors, curtains around the area, and lighting fixtures that are explosion-proof.
Under the hydrogen-vehicle regulations, Honda can service its Clarity in a “non-hardened shop” if it goes after the specific procedures below to ensure the car is in a “minimum-fueled state,” meaning the bulk of the hydrogen has been liquidated from its tanks, stack, and plumbing.
The regulations require that less than 0.Five kilogram of hydrogen, at approximately five hundred eighty pounds per square inch, remain in the Clarity’s two tanks combined during service. Their total capacity is Five.Five kg at Ten,000 psi when total.
To drain the tanks of their hydrogen if a car comes into the dealer with more than that amount of fuel requires a very specific process that takes place outside the service bays.
It’s usually done in a designated area of the parking apron that’s only accessible to service personnel, Reed said. It will be away from tall buildings, with minimum height and distance requirements that are specified by the state.
Honda Clarity Fuel Cell hydrogen service equipment: diagram for assembly of fuel venting stack
