Toyota's fuel cell goal: Big cost cutting

By Hans Greimel, Crain News Service

TOKYO (Dec. 1, 2014) — Toyota Motor Corp.'s top fuel cell engineer predicts the auto maker will slash the cost of the next hydrogen-fueled powertrain to between one-third and one-fourth the cost of the current system, which debuted last week in the Mirai fuel cell sedan.

That's an ambitious goal. But it represents a slower pace in cost-reduction than that seen in the Mirai.

The cost of the Mirai's fuel cell is about one-twentieth the cost of the system that Toyota used in the previous-generation fuel cell vehicle, which debuted in 2008.

Yasuhiro Nonobe, general manager for fuel cell vehicle system design, said continuing that pace of dramatic cost cuts is unlikely. Nonetheless, his team has set a cost target of as little as a quarter of the cost of today's system for the company's next-generation fuel cell system, he said.

That would debut in five or six years, Mr. Nonobe added. Toyota is aiming for around 2020, partly to showcase the futuristic green-car technology at the Tokyo Olympics that year.

“It's a challenge we have to strive for because the Olympics are a golden opportunity,” Mr. Nonobe said at a Mirai test drive in Tokyo.

Costs will have to come down precipitously to make hydrogen fuel cell cars economically feasible. They have been kept high by sophisticated fuel cell membranes, platinum for the catalysts, carbon fiber-reinforced storage tanks and extra batteries. As a result, today's fuel cell cars require substantial government subsidies. Toyota said it will sell the Mirai for $57,500 starting in late 2015; federal and California incentives of about $13,000 will lower the price to consumers.

Toyota engineers say more affordable technologies will help them reach their goal of selling tens of thousands of fuel cell vehicles a year around 2020. And by 2025, they want the price gap between fuel cell cars and conventional gasoline vehicles to be the same as that between hybrid vehicles and gasoline ones.

Today, a hybrid drivetrain adds thousands of dollars in cost. In the Toyota Camry lineup, for example, the hybrid version costs more than $3,800 more than the conventional gasoline counterpart.

Toyota cut costs on the Mirai system by re-engineering the fuel cell stack from scratch, said Seiji Mizuno, general manager for fuel stack development. There were many areas of improvement:

• Toyota switched to less expensive titanium, from gold-plated stainless steel, for certain parts of the fuel stack.

• Engineers reduced the use of pricey platinum by cutting the amount of catalyst by two-thirds and changing its composition.

• Toyota adopted a more economical 3-D mesh airflow-channel design, replacing the previous straight-channel design.

“It is a totally different design and structure,” Mr. Mizuno said of the Mirai's fuel cell system. “That is why it costs less.”

The new fuel cell stack is also smaller and more powerful. It has a power density of 3.1 kilowatts per liter, compared with about 1.5 kilowatts per liter for the 2008 technology. Engineers did not say what density they target for 2020.

The Mirai also derives some savings by piggybacking on electric-drive technology already deployed in Toyota's hybrid lineup. Mr. Mizuno said the low-cost nickel-metal hydride battery, for example, is the same as the one used in the Camry Hybrid sedan.

This report appeared on the website of Automotive News, a Detroit-based sister publication of Tire Business.