Toyota Motor Corporation’s recently improved FCHV, or 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).
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Leases for the vehicle are to begin on July 1.
Fuel cell vehicles that acquire certification under MLIT’s new safety standard regarding the commercialisation 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 FCHVegan in Japan and the US in December 2002, 11 have been leased in Japan and five in the US – two of those were in Germany this week for demonstration drives at a Toyota technology seminar.
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 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 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 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 the previous three years.
The motor output has been increased from 80 to 90kW, improving acceleration performance.
A choice of two exterior colours is now available, with light blue metallic added to the silver metallic that was previously available.
