Toyota Hydrogen Fuel Cell on sale by 2015 at €100k

The 2003 Toyota Fine S Hydrogen FCEV

Toyota has done a great job of turning the car buying public on to alternative powertrains with it Hybrid setup in the Prius, and now it plans to go the same route with a hydrogen-powered production Toyota.

Despite Toyota’s headline commitment to hybrid cars, it has been beavering away for a long time with fuel cell technology for its cars.

The photo at the top is of the 2003 Toyota Fine-S Concept which was developed to test the fledgeling hydrogen fuel cell setup, and Toyota were running fuel cell cars in Japan and California at this time too, although not, as far as we know, the Fine S.

Toyota has also had a fleet of 100 FCEV Highlanders running around for a while, featuring a 96kW fuel cell delivering power to a 120bhp electric motor.

When we learnt about the Highlander FCEV project Toyota said that it was planning on bringing the hydrogen Highlander to market by 2015 at around $50k.

So the news that Toyota has confirmed they are going to launch a fuel cell vehicle in Europe by 2015, but that it will now cost €100k ( around $140k) is a bit confusing.

Have Toyota decided their FCEV will now not be a prosaic Highlander but a high-end, futuristic-looking car like the Fine S, or have they worked out that €100k is the realistic price to pay for a FCEV at this early stage in its development?

At the moment, we really don’t know. All we do know is that Toyota has confirmed a production fuel cell vehicle and it looks like we’ll have to wait a while to find out exactly what they’re planning.

But it’s a step in the right direction, nevertheless.

By Cars UK