Japan’s Honda Motor said it will start producing a new hydrogen fuel cell system, jointly developed with US auto giant General Motors, this year.
The company, gunning to expand its hydrogen business, plans to gradually step up sales this decade.
With the “next-generation” system, Honda aims to more than double durability compared with its older fuel cell system. It also hopes to bring costs down by two-thirds.
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Honda is seeking to expand the use of its new system not only for its own fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), but also commercial vehicles like heavy trucks, as stationary power stations and in construction machinery.
It will target annual sales of around 2,000 units of the new system in the middle of this decade, the company said on Thursday. It is aiming to boost that to 60,000 units per year in 2030.
“While commercial vehicles are in use all over the world, they’ll likely see electrification just as with passenger cars,” said Tetsuya Hasebe, general manager of Honda’s hydrogen business development division.
That would likely lead to a divergence in trucks using batteries and those running on fuel cells, he added.
- Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena
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