Toyota has delivered and integrated its first fuel-cell stack into the new city bus by CaetanoBus, the H2.City Gold.
This marks the first step of a collaboration announced in September 2018 by Toyota’s European subsidiary, Toyota Motor Europe (TME), and CaetanoBus, a major Portuguese bus engineering and production company, to build hydrogen fuel-cell city buses.
Dr Johan van Zyl, President and CEO OF TME, said: “Thanks to their longstanding relationship with Toyota, their understanding of market requirements and their technical capabilities, CaetanoBus was the ideal partner to start the development of our powertrain sales activities in Europe.
“I look forward to receiving the first market feedback from this initiative and the expansion of our supply business of hydrogen fuel-cell technology.”
Adapted from Toyota’s Mirai passenger car, the fuel-cell stack is located on the bus’s roof and is coupled to five hydrogen tanks with a total capacity of 37.5kg, giving the bus a range of up to 400km (250 miles). It can be refuelled with hydrogen pressurised at 350 bar in under 9 minutes, and its only emissions are water vapour.
The trial bus will be operated in various European cities over the next months, before commercialisation mid 2020.
