Click the FCX Clarity for a high-res gallery

At the Los Angeles Auto Show this morning, Honda got to step three of a process that began at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show when they first introduced the non-driveable FCX concept. A few months later they introduced a running version of that concept and almost exactly a year ago they started letting media, including AutoblogGreen, drive those cars at the Laguna Seca raceway in Monterey. At the time of the original introduction in Tokyo they stated their intention to begin low-volume production in mid-2008. They repeated that intention last year and today they publicly showed the production intent version of the car now known as the FCX Clarity.

The layout of the car remains largely the same as the concept with Honda's unique vertical flow fuel cell in the center console of the four door sedan body. Like the concept, Honda has chosen to stay with a 5,000 psi fuel storage system for the compressed hydrogen gas. Given the space age cab-forward style of the original concept one might have expected a significant change in styling for the production car. You would be mostly wrong. Aside from the nose being stretched a few inches in order to provide some crush space, the Clarity looks almost identical to the concept.

There's more after the break.

[Source: Honda]