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At a car factory in this city named after Toyota, the usual robots with their swinging arms are missing. Instead, workers intently fit parts into place by hand with craftsmanship-like care.
The big moment on the assembly line comes when two bulbous yellow tanks of hydrogen are rolled over and delicately fitted into each car's underside.
While much of the world is going gung-ho for electric vehicles to help get rid of auto emissions and end reliance on fossil fuels, Japan's top automaker Toyota Motor Corp. is banking on hydrogen.
Toyota sells about 10 million vehicles a year around the world. It has sold only about 4,000 Mirai fuel cell vehicles since late 2014, roughly half of them outside Japan.
Is Toyota going to build the network of hydrogen-refueling stations to serve its hydrogen-powered cars?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:34AM
If I was a board member at Toyota I'd be screaming right about now, this will prove to be a huge money loser for Toyota.
Because hydrogen isn't as an efficient energy storage medium as batteries are.
And hydrogen fuel cells are more complex, thus expensive.
And there is basically no hydrogen supply infrastructure outside of industrial areas.
I have some knowledge in this area, speaking as a former spokesperson for the American Hydrogen Association, and member of a failed start up in 1992, building Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cells.