TOKYO — Japan’s government and the country’s top carmakers, including Toyota Motor, are joining forces to bet big that they can speed up the arrival of the fuel-cell era.
The still-costly and complex fuel cell technology uses hydrogen as fuel and could greatly curb automotive pollution.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s growth strategy, announced on Tuesday, included a call for subsidies and tax breaks for buyers of fuel-cell vehicles, relaxed curbs on hydrogen fuel stations and other steps under a road map to promote hydrogen energy.
That will bolster plans by Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, and Honda Motor, another Japanese giant, to start selling fuel-cell vehicles in 2015.
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On Wednesday, Toyota said that it planned to start selling its first fuel-cell vehicle for the mass market by the end of March 2015 in Japan for about 7 million yen, or $68,700. The Japanese automaker also said that it was preparing to start selling a fuel-cell vehicle around the summer of 2015 in the United States and Europe.
With two of Japan’s three biggest automakers going all in on fuel cells, the country’s long-term future as an automotive powerhouse could now hinge largely on the success of what they hope will be an important technology in the next few decades.
The auto sector carries special significance in Japan, providing nearly one in 11 jobs and about one-fifth of its manufacturing output. It is also one of the few big industries where Japan remains at the pinnacle of global competition, after losing much of its edge in electronics and elsewhere.
Japan’s governing party is pushing for ample subsidies and tax breaks for consumers to bring the cost of a fuel-cell car down to about $20,000 by 2025. The government is also aiming to create 100 hydrogen fuel stations by the end of March 2016 in urban areas where the vehicles will be sold initially.
“To stay globally competitive, Japan cannot afford to lag behind in this area,” said Yuriko Koike, a former environment minister who heads a group of ruling party lawmakers advocating hydrogen energy.
A fuel-cell vehicle, running on electricity from cells that combine hydrogen with oxygen, emits only water vapor and heat. Hydrogen fuel production from hydrocarbons emits some carbon dioxide, although Japan hopes to put carbon-free production into effect by 2040.
Hydrogen vehicles can run five times longer than battery-operated electric cars, and their tanks can be filled in just a few minutes, compared with recharging times from 30 minutes up to several hours for electric cars.
The challenges for fuel cell cars nevertheless remain daunting and growth could be slow, especially given the expense of building up an infrastructure of hydrogen fuel stations and the likely reliance on subsidies until costs come down.
“Even after 10 years, fuel-cell cars are likely to be less than 10 percent of the Japanese market,” said Ryuichiro Inoue, a professor at Tokyo City University and an expert in the auto industry. “This isn’t a strategy to talk about for the next 10 years, but for the next 20 to 30 years.”
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Even Toyota expects only tens of thousands of fuel-cell cars to be sold annually a decade from now, as the technology will need time to gain traction.
The government’s commitment to hydrogen vehicles in its growth strategy, however, shows how far the technology has come since Toyota and Honda began leasing fuel-cell-powered cars in Japan 12 years ago. Japan had set out bold predictions, later abandoned as unrealistic, of putting five million fuel cell cars on the road by 2020.
Engineers have since overcome a variety of technological challenges, including cold-weather ignition glitches caused by water’s freezing and the need to reduce loadings of platinum, the metal that fuel cells use as a catalyst.
Rivals like Hyundai Motor of South Korea and Daimler of Germany are also producing fuel-cell vehicles, but Japanese officials say that they believe the country will have an advantage after the United Nations adopted many of its proposals for global fuel-cell safety standards last June. This means it can avoid major changes to fuel-cell specifications for exports, keeping costs low.
Toyota, which astounded rivals 17 years ago by developing the Prius hybrid car in barely two years and then swallowed initial losses to establish its dominance in the segment, is confident in its fuel cells prospects.
“When we first introduced the Prius, there was little way we could make a profit and our vision was longer term, for the second- and third-generation models,” the Toyota managing officer Satoshi Ogiso told Reuters in March. “Unless you are willing to accept losses initially, it’s not possible to increase sales.”
