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| Toyota's fuel cell bus. |
SOLAR-POWER pundit Elon Musk rather robustly described Toyota Motor
Corporation’s plans to use a lot electricity to make and trap hydrogen to make a
little electricity “bullshit”.
Toyota of course then went and used a bull’s excretions to make
hydrogen to show the process can (admittedly with a lot of technology) be energy
neutral, and told Musk he is right. The world’s car makers just smirked at all
this wit, and went on investing heavily in preparing to sell an electric fleet
by 2020.
Toyota is sticking to its hydrogen guns, however, and for its next
installment in the hydrogen saga announced it will sell fuel cell buses (FC
buses) under the Toyota brand from early next year.
Having already undergone
repeated field tests for practical use, the Bureau of Transportation of the
Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans to use two of these FC buses (model name:
Toyota FC Bus) as fixed-route buses. Toyota plans to introduce over 100 FC buses
mainly in the Tokyo area, ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
In view of this, the FC buses will be sold for the first time in Japan in early
2017, so as to help increase the level of understanding by the general public to use FC buses as a form of public transportation.
The number of FC buses will increase over the next four years to
meet the transport demands of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020.
The Toyota FC Bus was developed by Toyota, based on the company’s
experience in developing FC buses together with Hino Motors Ltd. (Hino).
The Toyota Fuel Cell System (TFCS), which was developed for the
Mirai fuel cell vehicle, has been adopted to provide better energy efficiency in
comparison with internal combustion engines, as well as to deliver superior
environmental performance with no CO2 emissions or substances of concern (SOCs)
when driving.
The company said in a statement the 9 kW battery systems in the FC
bus can also be used as a power source in the event of disaster.
