Toyota goes from hybrids to hydrogen

TOKYO – Rocket science long dismissed as too impractical and expensive for everyday cars is getting a push into the mainstream by Toyota, the world's top-selling automaker.

Buoyed by its success with electric-gasoline hybrids, Toyota is betting that drivers will embrace hydrogen fuel cells, an even cleaner technology that runs on the energy created by an electrochemical reaction when oxygen in the air combines with hydrogen stored as fuel.

Unlike internal combustion engines that power most vehicles on roads today, a pure hydrogen fuel cell emits no exhaust, only some heat and a trickle of pure water. Fuel cells also boast greater efficiency than the internal combustion process, which expends about two-thirds of the energy in gasoline as heat.

Toyota's fuel cell car will go on sale before April. Despite seemingly compelling advantages, the technology has struggled to move beyond prototypes after several decades of research and development by industry and backing from governments.

For the auto industry in particular, there have been hurdles to commercialization including the prohibitive expense of such vehicles. On top of that, fueling stations are almost nonexistent. Doubters also quibble about the green credentials of fuel cells because hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels.

But Satoshi Ogiso, the engineer leading Toyota's project, is confident there's a market that will grow in significance over time. Part of Ogiso's optimism stems from his background. He worked for 20 years on Toyota's Prius hybrid. The Prius, which has an electric motor in addition to a regular gasoline engine, was met with extreme skepticism. But it won over the public as a stylish way to limit the environmental damage of motoring. Worldwide sales of Toyota's hybrids have topped 6 million since their debut in 1997.

"The environment has become an ever more pressing problem than in 1997," Ogiso said. "Hydrogen marks an even bigger step than a hybrid. It is our proposal for a totally new kind of car. If you want to experience this new world, if you want to go green, this is it."

Toyota, which began working on fuel cells in 1992 but won't disclose how much it has invested, is not the first automaker to produce such a vehicle. Forklifts powered by fuel cells are becoming more common in factories, and fuel cell buses have been trialed in some cities. General Motors Co. also has been working on the technology and Honda Motor Co. already sells the FCX Clarity fuel cell sedan in limited numbers and plans a new fuel cell car, with a more powerful fuel cell stack, next year.

But Toyota's decision as the world's top-selling automaker to start commercial production of a fuel cell car is a vital boost to the technology's prospects for wider adoption. Its release will also win the automaker plaudits for corporate responsibility.

"It works to symbolically enhance the automaker's ecological image," said Yoshihiro Okumura, auto analyst at Chiba-gin Asset Management.

Toyota's still-to-be-officially-named vehicle goes on sale in Japan sometime before April, and within a half year after that in the U.S. and Europe.

Ogiso, like many other experts, thinks reliance on gasoline is not sustainable in the long run, particularly with rapid growth in vehicle ownership in developing nations, which could translate into hundreds of millions of additional cars on the roads globally. Working on the Prius and the fuel cell, he said, was a similar process: painstakingly tackling the challenge of packaging all the special parts needed for a new type of car.

Like the initial years of the Prius, subsidies and tax breaks are expected to lower the fuel cell price tag in Japan. Ogiso said at the beginning it cost over $1 million to build just a test car. The planned commercial model will sell for about $70,000. Initially, Toyota had said the car might cost $100,000. Overseas prices have not been announced.

With subsidies and tax breaks, buyers might be able to get the fuel cell for $50,000, Okumura said. That is still more than double the Prius, which with no frills sells for just over $20,000. It no longer gets green subsidies but still is eligible for a $1,000 tax break in Japan. Plug-in versions, which sell for nearly $30,000, get bigger discounts, totaling as much as $4,200.

Toyota has not given sales projections but says interest has been strong. Apart from cost, the other big drawback is lack of hydrogen fueling stations. Only about 30 exist in Japan, though the government is pushing to get more built. Lack of charging stations is also a weakness for electric cars but fewer obstacles exist to establishing and supplying that infrastructure because electricity networks are already in place. That is one reason automakers such as Nissan Motor Co. and Tesla Motors push electric vehicles as the most practical way to be a green driver.

"We are a little bit skeptical," Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said of fuel cells. "Who's going to build the infrastructure?" Selling 500 or 1,000 vehicles a year might be easy but getting sales to mass levels, such as 500,000 a year, would be difficult, he said.

Toyota counters that electric cars tend to have limited cruise ranges, relegating them to a niche. Hydrogen fueling takes only three minutes versus several hours to charge an electric vehicle. The planned fuel cell runs about 430 miles on one hydrogen fueling.

Toru Hatano, auto analyst at IHS Automotive in Tokyo overseeing powertrains, forecasts that only several thousand fuel cell cars will sell per year globally.

"There really isn't anything good that happens for the consumer by getting a fuel cell," he said, compared with a hybrid's savings on gas consumption.

Beyond that, Hatano said hydrogen is now mostly produced from fossil fuels.

"You are using energy to create hydrogen, and then using more energy to pressurize it for storage, and so overall you aren't saving on energy at all."

But scientists are working on cleaner ways to make hydrogen, and in theory hydrogen is cheap, plentiful and possibly the next-generation fuel for motorists.

QUIET RACE CAR

The four-seater sedan, while sporting an aggressive grille and fluid body curves, looks pretty much like a regular car. Those who have test driven fuel cell vehicles say they have a powerful torque, with quick acceleration, akin to the thrill of driving a sports car. Yet they are quiet like electric cars, purring on the roads with no engine roar.