Hydrogen-powered Toyota FCV Concept revealed

The Toyota FCV Concept – Toyota’s latest hydrogen-powered car – has been revealed ahead of a debut at the Tokyo Motor Show.

 

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Toyota revealed last month that their latest take on a hydrogen-powered car would be revealed at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show. And here it is – the Toyota FCV Concept.

The FCV Concept points clearly at Toyota’s first proper production fuel cell car – expected to hit Toyota showrooms in 2015 – and Toyota are keen we realise that, subject to a refuelling infrastructure, the hydrogen-powered FCV is just like owning a regular ICE car.

So the FCV can be refuelled in under three minutes, has a range on a full tank of around 300 miles and the fuel cell can produce enough power for the elctric motor it runs to offer 134bhp. All very similar to a regular petrol or diesel car.

Of course, the whole point of hydrogen-powered cars is that they only emit water from the tail pipe, so Toyota are homing in on that key point with the FCV too.

An air to water theme is ‘captured in the flowing liquid profile of the doors’ (say Toyota), the FCV is finished in a fetching blue, there’s a wave motif on the filler cap and the back end of the FCV has been inspired by the stern of a Catamaran. So now you know.

But the FCV – looking beyond the ‘message’ – is a clever car with a fuel cell stack that has a 3kW/l power output density (twice Toyota’s previous efforts), maximum output of 100kW and a high efficiency boost converter to increase the voltage resulting in a smaller motor, fewer fuel cells, reduced size and reduced cost.

Interestingly, Toyota say that a fully-fuelled FCV can produce enough electricity to power the average home for a week, which might end up being cheaper than paying your electricity bill if you can hook up your FCV to your house.

The Toyota FCV Concept will debut this month in Tokyo and is expeced to go on sale in 2015.