Tokyo - TOYOTA MOTOR
CORPORATION (TMC) announced today that the recently improved TOYOTA FCHV,
Toyota's fuel cell hybrid passenger vehicle, has become the first vehicle
in Japan to acquire vehicle type certification under the Road Vehicles
Act, as amended and enacted on March 31, by Japan's Ministry of Land,
Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT). Leases for the vehicle are to begin
on July 1.
Fuel cell vehicles that
acquire certification under MLIT's new safety standard regarding the
commercialization and marketing of fuel cell vehicles no longer need to be
certified individually. Type certification can now be acquired through the
submission of representative vehicles.
Since setting out to develop
fuel cell vehicles, Toyota has been independently developing all major
fuel cell system components, including the all-important,
electricity-producing fuel cell stack. Since limited marketing of the
TOYOTA FCHV began in Japan and the U.S. in December 2002, 11 TOYOTA FCHVs
have been leased in Japan and five in the U.S. Toyota is also active in
applying its fuel cell technology to buses-after first conducting
real-world verification tests with a fuel cell bus prototype operating
within Tokyo's metropolitan public bus system (from August 2003 to
December 2004), Toyota now has eight units of its FCHV-BUS transporting
visitors between the Nagakute and Seto areas of the 2005 World Exposition
in Aichi, Japan.
Data gathered during the use
of the previous TOYOTA FCHV was fed back into development, resulting in
the new model, which features a fuel cell system with enhanced levels of
reliability and durability.
The new vehicle will be
offered to such customers as national and local governments, and companies
in energy-related fields.
The new TOYOTA FCHV is fitted
with new 35MPa high-pressure hydrogen tanks developed by Toyota, which can
hold 10% more hydrogen than the 35MPa tanks Toyota used before, extending
the cruising range from 300km to 330km in the 10-15 Japanese test cycle.
The high-pressure hydrogen
storage tank also features a high-pressure valve developed anew within the
Toyota Group. This valve follows a new design that positions a solenoid
shut-off valve inside the tank.
The new tank meets the
technical standard for compressed hydrogen automobile fuel tanks,
established in March this year as a safety standard for high-pressure
hydrogen, allowing the tank to be used for 15 years, compared to a
previous three years.
The motor output has been
increased from 80 to 90kW, improving acceleration performance. A choice of
two exterior colors is now available, with Light Blue Metallic added to
the Silver Metallic that was previously available.
