Toyota Hybrid Vehicles

Toyota Hybrid Vehicles

Toyota Hybrid Vehicles

Electric vehicles may be the media darlings at the moment, but fuel-cell cars ala hydrogen-powered EVs, are still lurking in the shadows of alternative power systems. Case in point: Toyota's FCHV program.

The automaker has announced that it will roll out a new version of their FCHV-adv (fuel cell hybrid vehicle-advanced) hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for use as taxis at Japan's Narita Airport. The fuel-cell crossovers are part of Toyota's cooperation with the Japanese government and hydrogen research associations to test the sustainability of fuel cell vehicles on the road.

Toyota plans to provide a full fleet fuel cell taxis to All Nippon Airways for its Welcome-Home taxi service offered to customers returning to Japan from abroad and for its early morning pickup plan The taxis will be used to collect data on usage of the FCHV-adv, including both city-style and highway driving durability, along with efficiency and consumption.

This will not be the first time Toyota is putting the FCHV-adv cars, or the technology, on the road. One year ago, Toyota introduced a fleet of more than 100 FCHV-advs for U.S. testing by government agencies in both California and New York, as a follow-up to testing that began in 2002 with the first-generation FCHV in California. At the end of 2010 Toyota also introduced a commercial bus using the same technology as the FCHV-adv, which is running between Tokyo International Airport and central Tokyo.

As of last year, Toyota planed to have a consumer-ready version of the FCHV-adv available on the U.S. market by the end of 2015. Whether or not that ambitious goal is met (there are still a number of cost and production hurdles to make it commercially viable) remains to be seen.

The Toyota Highlander-based FCHV-adv was launched for testing worldwide in 2008. After testing in northern Canada and Alaska, it was shown that the vehicles had no difficulty starting or operating down to temperatures as low as -22 degrees Fahrenheit. More importantly for this latest test, the current FCHV-adv model can travel somewhere between 431 and 516 miles on a single tank of compressed hydrogen gas. The U.S. Department of Energy rated the 2008 model at the equivalent of 68 mpg.

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