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Journalism of Courage
You would never guess that Jon Spallino drives what is probably the most expensive car in this city known for automotive excess. Or that he is the world’s most technologically advanced commuter.
‘‘When the cars pull up to me, the Porsches and the Bentleys and all that, I just sort of say, well, that’s nice, but for what this costs I could buy 10 of those,’’ said Spallino, while driving up Interstate 405, the freeway from his office in Irvine toward his home in Redondo Beach.
He was at the wheel of his silver Honda FCX, a car worth about $1 million that looks like a cross between a compact — say, a Volkswagen Golf — and a cinder block. The FCX is powered by hydrogen fuel cells, the futuristic technology that many automakers see as an eventual solution to the world’s energy woes, though its real potential is a subject to debate inside and outside the auto industry.
Spallino, a 40-year-old executive at a California construction and engineering firm, and his wife, Sandy, have been leasing the FCX for $500 a month since July in one of the more unusual experiments in the auto industry’s history. So grandiose is the experiment that Honda has made arrangements with a distributor of hydrogen to have a refueling station built near the Spallinos’ house. Not that they can use it. The local fire department, wary of this elemental zeppelin gas, has yet to let the station open. So the car is being refueled at Honda’s American headquarters in Torrance.
— NYT
