Even though Toyota is currently the world leader in hybrid sales, with more than 1 million Toyota Prii sold in the U.S. alone, Toyota Maryland said the company remains committed to exploring other new ways to motivate the automobile industry, including hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. And those efforts continued recently when Toyota helped open the country’s first hydrogen fueling station to be fed directly from an active industrial hydrogen pipeline.
According to Toyota Dallas, the facility, developed through a collaboration between Toyota, Air Products, Shell Oil, California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is located near Toyota Motor Sales’ West Coast campus and will provide hydrogen for both Toyota’s fuel-cell demonstration program and that of other automakers operating in the Los Angeles area.
“This fueling station will be a tremendous model to show how effortless a pipeline supply of hydrogen can be to an automobile fueling station and other hydrogen fuel-cell applications,” said David J. Taylor, vice president, energy business at Air Products. “This site will be a model to learn and expand pipeline-fed stations as opportunities arise.”
The new hydrogen filling station also is just the latest component of Toyota’s campaign to bring this technology to the market. The automaker’s fuel-cell demonstration fleet has been on the road since 2002, traveling millions of miles and driving numerous Toyota breakthroughs. For example, while those first fuel-cell hybrids had a range of only 130 miles, the newest generation of Toyota Boston vehicles can travel some 430 miles on a single tank of hydrogen.
“Building an extensive hydrogen re-fueling infrastructure is a critical step in the successful market launch of fuel-cell vehicles,” said Chris Hostetter, group vice president, product and strategic planning, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. “We plan to bring a fuel-cell vehicle to market in 2015, or sooner, and the infrastructure must be in place to support our customers’ needs.”
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