Toyota is Developing Environmentally Friendly Vehicles Powered by Fuel Cells

MERRILLVILLE, Ind. - July 10, 2013 - PRLog -- Toyota of Merrillville (http://www.toyotaofmerrillville.com/about-us/) is looking forward to being able to offer another high-efficiency vehicle from Toyota. The automaker plans to roll out a sedan powered by hydrogen fuel cells in the future, which would be sold as a 2015 model. Toyota hopes to defy expectations and encourage widespread adoption of the new technology much like it did with the Prius nearly two decades ago. The new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle would be priced in the neighborhood of $50,000.

A hydrogen fuel cell is a stack of plastic and rare metal membranes that can combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. The only by-product is water. A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle would be powered by an electric motor, and would have a battery pack to store energy and augment the power generated by the fuel cell stack when necessary. In the past, fuel cell technology has been price-prohibitive, with some prototypes costing over a million dollars to manufacture.

The other issue preventing widespread acceptance of hydrogen fuel cell technology is the availability of compressed hydrogen. At present, refining and compressing hydrogen is a costly process, and the facilities to do it are few and far between.

How Toyota plans to address those two issues has yet to be answered.  If Toyota is able to bring a fuel cell vehicle to market near the $50,000 price point without taking a huge loss, that alone would be a radical advancement in technology.

John German, program director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, said that this would be “a genuinely better vehicle” over the long term than a gas-powered or a battery-only vehicle.

While many other automakers have produced fuel cell vehicles, and some have even debuted vehicles in small production runs that have been available for lease in limited markets, no manufacturer has produced and sold a fuel cell vehicle on a large scale. Toyota even created a fuel cell version of the Highlander SUV (http://www.toyotaofmerrillville.com/2013-toyota-highlander/) called the FCHV, which has been in testing since 2002.

Toyota of Merrillville is a leading Toyota dealer serving northwest Indiana. The dealership provides new Toyota models, pre-owned vehicles, and high-quality service and maintenance at 4450 East US-30 in Merrillville, and can be contacted at 866-314-2864. Interested drivers can also follow the Toyota of Merrillville blog (http://blog.toyotaofmerrillville.com/) for all the latest updates on new and future vehicles from Toyota.