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Bloomberg
As others automakers plan battery-powered SUVs and trucks, Toyota Motor Corp’s vision for the future of driving remains a hydrogen-sipping sedan.
The Japanese behemoth will begin sales late next year of the second-generation Mirai, its fuel cell-powered four-door, and ramp up annual production by 10-fold from the current model. Toyota’s bet that it can position a hydrogen sedan for more of a mass market flies in the face of rivals wagering on putting batteries into the bigger-bodied vehicles consumers are buying.
Toyota has been slower than peers to embrace EVs, citing uncertain demand in key markets including the US and technical hurdles that limit battery range and recharging times. While the company has pledged to offer an electrified version of every model in the next five years, and 10 fully electric vehicles by early the next decade, it’s also going to keep coaxing consumers to give hydrogen a try.
“Toyota won’t be putting all our eggs in one technology basket,†Doug Murtha, Toyota’s US group vice president for corporate strategy and planning, said at a briefing in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Toyota’s near-term electrification goals in the US centre on its gas-electric hybrid powertrains. It currently sells six hybrid vehicles and said it will add a plug-in hybrid version of its RAV4 crossover next year.
The company plans to increase sales of hybrid cars and SUVs in the US to 25% of deliveries by 2025, up from 9%.
Toyota began developing hydrogen-powered cars more than 20 years ago, but progress has been slow due to high material costs and steep hurdles to setting up refuelling infrastructure. Recent technological advances halved the cost of fuel cell stacks that mix hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, allowing the carmaker to boost global output from 3,000 a year in 2018 to 30,000 next year and 200,000 by 2025, Taiyo Kawai, general manager of the company’s hydrogen efforts, said in London.
Rival automakers such as General Motors Co in the US and BMW in Europe have invested in fuel cell technology but are prioritising EVs in their current and future zero-emission products. In the US, only Toyota, Honda Motor and Hyundai Motor sell fuel cell-powered passenger cars — and only at a handful of dealers due to the scarcity of hydrogen stations.
The first Mirai — which means “future†in Japanese — debuted in late 2014, but availability in the US has been limited to California and Hawaii.