Toyota Motor would focus on selling hydrogen powered trucks and cars in Europe and China, as part of a push to sell 200,000 of these vehicles by 2030, executives have said.
Reuters said the decision marked a shift in focus for the Japanese automaker, a major backer of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles as an alternative to electric vehicles. Until now emphasis had been on passenger cars and the North American market, an approach that had stalled.
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Reuters said the strategy update was the first by Toyota since it set up a separate hydrogen focused unit this month to expand the application of fuel cell technology into wider applications, including industrial power generation and commercial trucks.
Toyota sold just over 3,900 fuel cell vehicles in 2022, less than half of 1% of its global sales of around 9.5m vehicles.
“This may be a strange way of putting it, but 200,000 is not a big number,” chief technology officer Hiroki Nakajima told Reuters. “We believe this number and more can be achieved.”
By focusing on China and Europe, where hydrogen production and demand was higher, Toyota aimed to bring costs down, Nakajima said, adding the automaker would also look to strengthen ties with other companies.
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By GlobalDataReuters noted Toyota and Daimler Truck last May said they had agreed to cooperate on hydrogen technology and reached a preliminary deal to combine their truck businesses in Japan.
Toyota launched its dedicated fuel cell unit, the Hydrogen Factory, with 1,350 staff earlier this month.
In Japan, where the government has backed hydrogen as an energy security alternative, Toyota could work with local governments to transition diesel powered fleets of vehicles such as ambulances and garbage trucks to fuel cell technology, Nakajima told Reuters.
Toyota said it expected the global market for fuel cells to grow to around US$35bn by 2030, up more than 15 times from 2020 levels, citing a forecast from market research firm Fuji Keizai.
