The Internal Revenue Service said this week that Honda's FCX qualified for a $12,000 federal tax credit. That would be good news for the owners of the hydrogen-powered car -- if there were any.
Only two of the futuristic fuel-cell vehicles are in private hands, and both of those are on $500-a-month leases. That means Honda technically owns the cars. Which also means that Honda gets the tax credit.
Fuel-cell electric vehicles use on-board electrochemical reactions to produce electricity from hydrogen fuel stored in pressurized tanks. They qualify for the tax credit under a 2005 federal law that provides breaks to taxpayers who do certain things to conserve energy, including driving fuel-cell vehicles.
Honda applied for the credit even though it will probably be next year before it has a next-generation fuel-cell vehicle ready for the public.
"We figured if you're going to do it, you might as well do it now," says Steve Ellis, manager of the alternative fuels department at American Honda Motor Co. in Torrance.
The cars, which are hand-built in Japan, are available only by lease because they would be prohibitively expensive to buy. "They call them million-dollar cars," Ellis says, "and that's not so far-fetched."
The FCX is certified in California as a zero-emission vehicle and gets the equivalent of 68 miles per gallon, although its fuel costs considerably more than gasoline. It also can be hard to find -- there are only about half a dozen public hydrogen fueling stations in the Greater L.A. area.
Tax breaks aside, the car is a hit with Q'Orianka Kilcher, the 17-year-old actress who drives one of the two privately leased FCXes. (The other is leased by a South Bay man who owned one of Honda's natural-gas-powered Civics and seemed a likely candidate to road-test the FCX.)
"I'm very lucky," says Kilcher, who played Pocahontas in the 2005 film "The New World" and is an advocate of environmental causes.
"When I first heard about hydrogen cars, I promised myself I would never pump a gallon of gas. But I thought it would take at least another decade before I could get one."
Kilcher, who lives in Santa Monica, got her FCX in March after approaching Honda at a hydrogen industry event in Long Beach. She took her driver's test in the car and now tools around L.A. on a variety of missions that include driving her younger brothers to school -- where her car is in demand for show-and-tell day.
