Balance Of Power: Honda Shows Smart Home With An Engine

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Rattled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and reminded by smaller quakes that are a daily occurrence in Japan, every large Japanese automaker entered the smart home business. We have seen smart homes from Toyota and from Nissan. Today, we went all the way to Minamiyono in Saitama to visit the smart home from Honda.

Of all the houses visited, the Honda house appears to have the highest degree of system integration and redundancy. It has the requisite solar panels, it allows to charge an EV (Honda recommends its new 118 MPGe Fit EV), it has a storage battery and can use the EV’s batteries as backup when disaster strikes.

However, again, a small ICE tips the balance of power in Honda’s direction. A compact cogeneration unit uses a tiny engine with a big name: The one cylinder “EXlink multi-link type high expansion ratio engine” has an engine displacement of 163cc (9.95 ci), whereas the intake volume is only 110cc (6.71 ci). The Atkinson cycle engine runs either on natural gas, or on LPG.

Around 90 percent of all Japanese households have some kind of a gas supply, the “all-electric house” is a recent phenomenon, I learn today from Honda Chief Engineer Naoya Toida. The little wall unit generates electricity via a sine wave inverter generator, and heat via an exhaust heat exchanger. The heat is used for hot water and heating (radiant or forced air.) The unit produces a moderate 1 kilowatt of electricity, and 2.5 kilowatt of heat.

The cogeneration unit goes together with a storage battery, a water heater and a management unit, all flat enough to fit to the side of a wall with minimum fuss. The design is easy on the eye. A solar panel goes on the roof. The house itself is chockablock full with smart home gadgets. If needed, the house can be operated remotely via the vehicle navigation system, or a smart phone.

With Japan’s nukes off the grid, blackouts are a constant danger. In this house, they lose their threat potential. A Honda engineer cuts the power to the grid. 30 seconds later, the system has automatically reconfigured itself to autonomous mode. The lights are back on. We have power as long as the sun shines and/or as long as natural gas comes through the pipe. Should the big one strike, and everything is out, we can liberate the gas bottle from the barbecue to produce electricity and heat, even to charge the Fit for a get-away. But who would want to leave a cozy and lit home now and venture into the pitch black?

Honda is not in the house business. It strives to sell the system to builders and home owners. Honda is no newcomer to this business, it has built and sold cogeneration units since 2002. The smart home in Saitama is part of a demonstration and testing project, together with Saitama University.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

More by Bertel Schmitt

Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 9 comments
  • Danwat1234 Danwat1234 on Jun 18, 2012

    Where can I buy an atkinson cycle regular gasoline generator? I assume it alters it's RPMS based on load for even more efficiency.

  • BangForYourBuck BangForYourBuck on Jun 20, 2012

    Is this where all their R&D cash is going? This and their new jet and their latest robot? This is great and all. But still I want my desirable Civic back.

  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
Next