New Toyota, Hino fuel cell bus to ply in Toyota City

Toyota Motor Corporation and Hino Motors have developed a new Toyota Fuel Cell System-equipped bus, which is scheduled to service the Toyota Oiden bus route in Toyota City from January 9.

The Toyota Fuel Cell System, which integrates fuel cell and hybrid vehicle technologies, was developed for the Mirai fuel cell vehicle launched in December 2014. The new fuel cell bus is equipped with eight high-pressure hydrogen tanks as well as two fuel cell stacks and two motors to provide increased output. The bus also features a system for supplying electric power to buildings and other facilities during emergencies, which was enhanced through rigorous verification testing beginning in November 2013.

The bus, which has a length of 10,525mm, width of 2490mm and height of 3340mm, has a capacity (seated, standing, and driver) of 77 people.

Toyota and Hino will verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the fuel cell bus through testing involving commercial operation on regular routes on public roads and will feed back the results into R&D. Hydrogen fueling of the bus will be carried out at Toyota Ecoful Town, under a New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization project.

The verification testing will be conducted with the cooperation of Toyota City as a part of public fuel cell bus road trials and emergency external power supply testing that began in 2010 under the Toyota City Low-Carbon Verification Project, which has been selected as one of the Next-Generation Energy and Social System Demonstration Projects being promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.