At the "NHA Annual Hydrogen Conference" in Sacramento, Keynote Session 3 titled "Vehicle and Infrastructure" took place in the morning, April 2, 2008.
Many lectures were delivered by major automobile manufacturers including General Motors Corp (GM), Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co Ltd and BMW AG of Germany, the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a nonprofit organization promoting the use of fuel cells in Calif, as well as Shell Hydrogen LLC of the Netherlands and Air Products and Chemicals Inc of the US.
Toyota representative Taiyo Kawai, general manager of the Fuel Cell System Engineering Division of the Fuel Cell System Development Group appeared on stage.
He made a comment on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), which are drawing interest these days because they can be charged from household power outlets and drive a certain distance as electric vehicles. He explained that Toyota is also developing a PHEV, but its cell system's power storage performance is far below that of gasoline and hydrogen.
According to Toyota, if PHEVs that can drive 20 to 40 miles (32 to 64km) per charge as electric vehicles replaced all current automobiles in the US, it would only reduce energy consumption by 20 to 30%, given the driving patterns in the US. In other words, Toyota indicated its view that the maximum contribution that PHEVs can make in an effort to break dependence on fossil fuels or to halve CO2 emissions is a 20 to 30% reduction in energy.
Toyota said it will need to have hybrid technology in each of the automobiles that it is developing, including fuel cell cars and PHEVs, in order to support diverse energy resources. As for fuel cell cars, Toyota's improved fuel cell hybrid car "FCHV," which can drive more than 300 miles per charge and start up at -30 degrees at present, will have to increase its durability and reliability as well as achieving further cost cuts, Kawai said.
Moreover, he emphasized fuel cell cars will not spread out unless the number of hydrogen stations increases. After explaining that Japanese automobile manufacturers and energy companies had agreed to jointly promote their activities to spread fuel cell cars through 2015 in FCCJ (Fuel Cell Commercialization Conference of Japan), he expressed his high hopes for similar efforts in the US as well.
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