Toyota to focus on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
Toyota, it seems, is turning its back on the development of long-range electric vehicles and instead is focusing its energies on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
According to Jim Lentz – Toyota North America CEO – the Japanese car maker is concerned that battery-powered electric vehicles are limited and viable to only certain applications, this conclusion coming as a result of two decades of research and development into making a long-range pure-electric vehicle a reality.
He said that full-electric vehicles can only be used when you need to travel short distances, either from the office to the train or from home to the train as well as on the larger campuses. When it comes to long-range travel though, they’ve reached the conclusion that there are better alternatives – hybrids and plug-in hybrids – and the future is in hydrogen fuel cell technology.
The comments follow Toyota’s decision to end its partnership with Tesla which saw the electric vehicle specialist supply the Japanese carmaker with components for the recently discontinued RAV4 EV.
Lentz also said that they reached a point where they could either continue or stop and he preferred to invest the money into developing fuel cell technology, rather than making more Evs.
Toyota is looking to launch its first hydrogen fuel cell passenger car next year. This will be based on the all-new, zero-emission sedan FCV-R concept from 2011, which claimed a range of around 700km.
When compared to most of the current generation electric cars, their range is less than 200km, with the Tesla Model S – arguably the most advanced production vehicle out there – capable of traveling a maximum of 426km on a full charge.
Fuel cells also make sense from other points of view being cheaper in terms of cost per vehicle. Obviously the big problem when talking either about electric or any other major alternative fuel si the absence of the refuelling infrastructure however, there is a network of hydrogen refuelling station planned to roll out across California by the second half of 2015, so that’s a start.
