Toyota believes it can “rebuild the story” of hydrogen as a viable fuel for vehicles in the future, due to developments in heavy industry and other fields.

The Japanese giant continues to invest heavily in hydrogen powertrains, working on both fuel cell and combustion versions as part of its ‘multi-pathway’ strategy. 

It has launched two generations of the Mirai FCEV, but the saloon has sold only in tiny numbers, in part due to the lack of a hydrogen-fuelling infrastructure. There have also been criticisms of hydrogen’s suitability as a ‘green’ fuel, due to the environmental impact of its production compared with that of electricity.

Yet Thiebault Paquet, Toyota’s hydrogen boss in Europe, believes that continued development of hydrogen, including how to produce it more cleanly, means the fuel still has potential.

“For heavy-duty transport, we will need other solutions than battery-electric vehicles, and hydrogen could be the right solution,” Paquet told Autocar.

“We need to develop the infrastructure and the product at the same time, which is ongoing now. What we need to avoid and what maybe we did wrong before is not allowing for supply and demand. We learned from that, and I think we can rebuild the story.

“Heavy industry will create a lot of volume [for hydrogen], which can then contribute to the utilisations for other applications, like commercial vehicles and passenger cars.

“Companies developing hydrogen don’t make a distinction between hydrogen for transport and hydrogen for industry; it’s all part of their scale story. So hydrogen will come; this is something we’re convinced about.”

The EU is expecting hydrogen to account for 13-20% of its energy mix by 2050, with a target of 40GW of ‘green’ hydrogen production (produced from water and air using electrolysers) by 2030.

It has committed to opening hydrogen fuelling stations in every city and every 124 miles along key road networks, and while those are focused on use for long-distance delivery trucks, they could aid the development of a hydrogen fuelling network for cars. 

Paquet also addressed criticisms about hydrogen’s inefficiency compared with batteries, claiming that electricity can be used only relatively close to where it’s generated, whereas liquid hydrogen is easy to transport.

He added: “In Europe, we will always have to import [hydrogen], but there are regions in the world that can generate green, renewable hydrogen in abundance, and we can easily transport that to areas that cannot fully sustain themselves.”