Honda’s dedicated fuel-cell sedan arrived as a landmark compliance-and-technology project rather than a mass-market model. It emerged from Honda’s long-running fuel-cell development program and was first shown in late 2007, then entered lease production in 2008 for customers in the United States and Japan. The vehicle was notable for packaging its hydrogen fuel-cell system into a four-passenger sedan with a more conventional automotive layout and styling than earlier Honda fuel-cell prototypes, making it one of the first seriously production-intended fuel-cell cars to reach private and fleet users.
The model was always sold in very small numbers and never as a conventional retail program. In the U.S., Honda built its early customer base in Southern California, where hydrogen refueling access was concentrated, while Japan received leases to government and corporate users. Over its run, the car helped Honda prove out fuel-cell durability, packaging, and service infrastructure, and it became one of the best-known hydrogen vehicles of its era. Honda’s own historical archive lists the model as spanning July 2008 through March 2016, placing it in a single, continuous production period.
The nameplate was later replaced by the next-generation Clarity Fuel Cell, which reflected Honda’s shift toward a more advanced fuel-cell platform. As a result, this earlier sedan is remembered as the company’s breakthrough production FCV: a highly specialized, low-volume hydrogen car that bridged Honda’s experimental fuel-cell efforts of the 2000s and its later Clarity family.