Toyota is not a company known for pioneering the latest technology, what it’s known for is perfecting a working formula over decades. Toyota wasn’t the first car manufacturer to make hybrid cars, but they were the first to successfully commercialize it with the very popular Prius. While most companies are looking towards electrification as an alternative means of mobility, Toyota hasn’t given up on an alternative source of energy it has been developing for years.
Hydrogen cars were promised to be an alternative power source, but there have been many challenges along the way and only a few automakers like Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda are even making any attempts to develop this technology. Toyota has been quite vocal about their stance on electrification in favor of other alternative fuel sources, and their latest innovation might just see hydrogen-powered cars make a comeback.
Toyota Hasn’t Given Up On Hydrogen Power
Toyota has not had success with the Mirai with only about 14,000 vehicles sold in a decade of production, which is miniscule compared to the volume of other vehicles. This technology has already been considered a failure by the auto industry, but Toyota is still working on improving this technology. What engineers have come up with might be the best solution to hydrogen-powered cars at the moment.
At the recent Japan Mobility Biz Week, Toyota unveiled its future hydrogen plans with the use of cartridges which will replace the large fuel cells needed to store the large amounts of compressed hydrogen needed to power these vehicles. These cartridges are meant to have a few uses beyond just cars, which include generating electricity or just cooking with combustible hydrogen gas. Toyota envisions that this would work like giant AA batteries that can easily be swapped out when used up and replaced with another while the depleted cartridge gets refilled.
Toyota is also working on what it calls a Sweep Energy Storage System that has been in development since 2018 together with JERA Corporation. The aim is to use batteries recovered from electric vehicles and maximize their efficiency in conjunction with its latest hydrogen technology. Toyota has already been testing this latest hydrogen technology in one of its cars.
Toyota Has Enough Experience With Hydrogen-Powered Vehicles
We all know the Toyota Mirai, but that’s not the car this technology is being tested on. Toyota has been racing a hydrogen-powered GR Corolla since 2021 and has competed in endurance races in Japan and various international races since 2023. These races are simply used to test the durability of these cars in extreme conditions, which will now be further refined and developed until they meet Toyota’s approval for road use. A GR86 also participated in this race as part of the development process. Apart from this, it also has trucks and SUVs that have been powered by hydrogen, and in the near future, we may see innovations from Toyota that may change the trajectory of hydrogen cars and hopefully make them as mainstream as hybrid cars but with zero carbon emissions.
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