At this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, it seems that it’s all about hydrogen fuel cell technology and self-driving cars. Among the myriad of futuristic and pretty weird concepts, there is one vehicle that stands out from the crowd, and really seems to have a chance of going into production down the road in a slightly different form.
Generating and Sharing Energy
It’s the Toyota FCV Plus, a concept that incorporates fuel cell powertrains with autonomous driving technology, reflecting the Japanese car maker’s vision of safe, sustainable and environmentally-friendly transportation. The FCV Plus is a hydrogen-powered car, that in addition to not releasing any harmful emissions, can also generate energy on its own and share it with other vehicles and with the grid. This is a very radical concept that that obviously makes this car truly one of a kind.
It has a fuel cell stack mounted between the two front wheels, with electric motors attached to each of the four wheels, and a hydrogen tank in the back.
“Compressed hydrogen has a higher energy density than electricity, can be generated from a wide range of raw materials, and is easy to store, making it a promising future energy source. That’s why Toyota envisages a sustainable society in which hydrogen energy is in widespread use?a society embodied by this concept vehicle,” says Toyota in a press release.
No Harmful Emissions
The FCV Plus only emits water as a byproduct, which makes it incredibly eco-friendly, but what’s more, it also generates electricity itself, using hydrogen stored outside the vehicle. The energy that it produces can then be sent to the power grid, or it can be used to power residential or commercial buildings. This means that it could be used by its owners as an electricity source for their homes. Since it is able to connect with the infrastructure, this vehicle might have an important contribution towards ensuring sustainable energy production in small communities, which is one of the goals Toyota wants to achieve by developing this technology.
“When the car is not being used as a means of transport, it shares its power generation capabilities with communities as part of the local infrastructure,” the company adds.
In addition to this innovative technology that allows the car to share energy, it is also equipped with self-driving technology, which is why its interior is so unconventional. It can seat four people, and it’s quite spacious, thanks to the fact that the hydrogen and the electric powertrains are compact and don’t take up too much space, and the way they are positioned. The cabin is completely transparent, giving occupants a clear 360-degree view of the car’s surroundings. The entire windshield can also serve as a display, showing all sorts of information that lets the driver know what the conditions on the road are like.
Even though it’s clear that this concept is pretty far from going into production, Toyota says that it could launch a similar vehicle somewhere along the line, which could be in about 20 years. Toyota has been investing a lot of money and resources into the development of fuel-cell technology and hydrogen refueling infrastructure, so with the FCV Plus, it demonstrates once again how committed it is to accelerating hydrogen-powered car adoption.