Japanese car firm Toyota has announced they aim to sell ‘tens of thousands’ of hydrogen fuel-cell cars by the end of the decade.
They unveiled a new hydrogen-powered ECV-R concept car at the Geneva motor show and the company states that they intend to sell vehicles based on the prototype by 2015. They are currently reducing costs and fixing technical issues that have stopped hydrogen fueled cars from becoming wide spread. Hydrogen is an abundant element and it’s performance is comparable to gasoline. However it’s main disadvantages are the high costs of fuel cells and converting fuel stations to disperse hydrogen fuel.
Didier Leroy, Toyota’s head of operations in Europe said that the company intends to test the technology in Japan, the US and Europe over a two year period, before bringing the technology to market, although they haven’t released the price or the global sales target to the general public yet.
Other car manufacturers like Daimler and Hyundai have fuel cell programs already in place but Toyota’s status as the largest car manufacturer has given the strategy more weight. The UK has plans to accelerate development and BMW and GM are in talks to collaborate on fuel cell research.
Toyota hopes to boost it’s green cell strategy and build on it’s successes with the Prius hybrid. A new model of the Prius is expected to be released later this tear in a plug-in hybrid version alongside the Yaris and the hybrid RAV4. The company also unveiled the FB-Bh concept car that releases CO2 emissions of just 49g/km.