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Toyota Motor Company of Japan has two "trump cards" of new energy technologies-- oil-electric hybrid technology and hydrogen fuel cell technology. In the Chinese market, local carmakers focus on pure electric vehicles and fail to pay attention to the direction of hydrogen fuel cells, but Toyota plans to use this technology to boost the development of China's fuel cell vehicle industry.

In 2019, Toyota has successively reached technical cooperation on fuel cell with FAW Foton, FAW, Suzhou Jinlong, Guangzhou Automobile and other Chinese enterprises. Toyota, as a partner, provides key components of hydrogen fuel cell.

Toyota has begun supplying fuel cell stacks, a key component of fuel cell vehicles, to Chinese companies, Japanese media reported today. Toyota will produce fuel cell systems by supplying key components made in Japan to a Chinese system integrator, which integrates them with other components. Chinese commercial vehicle manufacturers working with Toyota will use these systems to produce fuel cell buses.

Thanks to this, Hagrid bus, a Chinese bus company, is the first to use this system, of which 20 fuel cell buses will be put into operation in Changshu in January 2020.

It is said that Toyota's move not only shows its sincerity to Chinese car companies, but also wants more Chinese car companies to stand in the fuel cell team and eventually "realize" the technology.

Toyota already has a blueprint for promoting hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the Chinese market. In early May this year, Toyota signed a partnership with BAIC Foton to provide hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology for BAIC Foton commercial vehicles. In July, Toyota announced that it would supply key components of hydrogen fuel cells to Chinese automakers FAW and Suzhou Jinlong. More Chinese commercial vehicle manufacturers have joined the team after Toyota opened key components of hydrogen fuel cells.

In the field of passenger vehicles, in September this year, Toyota successively reached strategic cooperation with Guangzhou Automobile and FAW to comprehensively promote new energy vehicles and energy-efficient vehicle products, including hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. In the announcement of deepening the strategic cooperation framework agreement issued on September 26th, GAC GROUP showed that the comprehensive technical cooperation reached with Toyota includes carrying FC (fuel cell) technology on the models of GAC and GAC Toyota, expanding the scope of HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) cooperation, promoting the development of EV (electric vehicle) models, jointly researching and improving the basic technology of electric vehicles, and continuously reducing the cost of core components.

In November this year, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC GROUP, said in a survey of GAC Toyota that GAC Toyota will introduce Toyota's most advanced hydrogen energy vehicles for demonstration operation by the end of this year, and Nansha will build China's first 70 MPA hydrogen filling station. GAC GROUP will also cooperate fully with Toyota in hydrogen energy.

Earlier, in October 2017, Toyota built a test hydrogen station, TMEC Changshu, in Changshu, Jiangsu province, to explore the possibility of introducing hydrogen-fueled vehicles to China.

Toyota believes that hydrogen fuel cells will play a greater role in popularizing electric vehicles, a move that will contribute to the rapid popularization of fuel cell technology in China.

In the Chinese market, new energy vehicles include pure electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and all three power technologies can receive national subsidies for the promotion of new energy, but only hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been "ignored" for a long time. so far, the foundation of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry is still very weak, the operating cost is high, and no breakthrough has been made. With the continuous development of the market, including Great Wall Automobile, Chery Automobile, BAIC Foton and other independent automobile companies, have been involved in the technical research and mass production of fuel cell vehicles.

In contrast, fuel cell vehicles have the characteristics of clean zero emission, long driving mileage and fast filling time, but it is difficult to promote in the market, and the construction cost and operating cost of hydrogenation stations are high, so they can not achieve rapid scale in the field of passenger vehicles. It is indeed a feasible scheme to popularize fuel cell technology in the field of commercial vehicles and buses.

In terms of industry, at the end of September this year, Lingang Group and other enterprises signed a strategic cooperation agreement on hydrogen Industrial Park in Shanghai Lingang, planning to establish hydrogen energy and fuel cell industry ecology such as hydrogen production, hydrogenation, fuel cell key components, demonstration operation, and so on. The industrial park will be located in Lingang, a free trade pilot zone in China (Shanghai), with a planned investment of 10 billion yuan. In addition, Nanhai District of Foshan, Guangdong Province, is an early area to develop hydrogen energy industry in China. It plans to build about 20 hydrogenation stations by 2020, as well as hydrogen production plants. The use of hydrogen energy may be the next industry outlet.

Toyota has stepped up the introduction of technology, perhaps taking a fancy to the wavering market situation of new energy vehicle technology, so as to push the fuel cell technology to a stage where mass production can be achieved.

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