Toyota Plans To Begin Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle Sales in U.S. by 2015
By John O'Dell January 15, 2009Hot on the heels of its recent announcement that it is pushing hard to bring plug-in hybrids
and more conventional hybrids to market as quickly as possible, Toyota Motor Co. now has put a date on the launch of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.
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Toyota Highlander fuel-cell vehicle completed a 350- mile trip from Osaka to Tokyo last year without refueling.
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The company's top product planner, Masatami Takimoto, a corporate executive vice president, said in interviews during the Detroit show's media days earlier this week that "limited commercialization" of a Toyota fuel-cell vehicle will begin "in 2015, and maybe sooner."
The program is seen by Toyota as "the beginning of true commercialization" of the fuel-cell vehicles, Takimoto said.
Although it is best for its gas-electric hybrids, especially the Prius, and its (mostly) reliable and fuel-efficient conventional cars, Toyota Motor Corp. has never abandoned the hydrogen fuel cell.
Indeed, the company continues testing models in Japan and in California as a charter member of the California Fuel Cell Partnership and last year announced several improvements that greatly improved reliability and range.
"We think the technology has been achieved," said John Hanson, Toyota's top environmental spokesman in the U.S.
"Now we have to reduce the costs and we think that under our present development program we will have done that by 2015."
The rest isn't up to Toyota, he said, although the automaker plans to partner with fuel companies and others to help push for development of a hydriogen fueling infrastructure.
Apart from the cost of the vehicles, that's the biggest drawback to fielding fuel-cell vehicles: No hydrogen-fuel industry or nationwide hydrogen refueling system for the cars, which run on electricity produced by combining hydrogen and oxygen and splitting off the electrons in an on-board electro-chemical process.
In the continued absence of an infrastructure to support the vehicles (there are fewer than 100 public hydrogen stations in the U.S. and Canada), it is likely that initial customers will be part of some sort of test program and that the vehicles will be available only in a few areas of the country.
That's been the case with the two automakers presently fielding fuel-cell vehicles, General Motors Corp. and Honda Motor Co.
They have limited leasing to carefully screened customers parts of California, New York and Washington DC.
GM has fielded 100 of its fuel-cell Equinox crossover vehicles, and Honda has leased five of its FCX clarity fuel-cell sedans, but says it should have almost 200 of them in customers' hands by the end of the year.
Hanson said that while Toyota is confident it can begin marketing fuel-cell electric vehicles, it has not yet set the exact timing, anticipated sales volume or pricing.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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