Toyota’s fuel-cell car going on sale next year, initially in California, will cost about $50 to fill up for about 300 miles of range, Bob Carter, senior vice president at Toyota’s U.S. operations, said Aug. 12 at a JPMorgan Chase & Co. conference. The cost will eventually fall to about $30 based on Energy Department estimates, he said.
Toyota partnered with the University of California to model the specific locations that would be needed to handle a population of more than 10,000 fuel cells and believes it needs only 68 stations initially, Carter said last month. The state plans to spend $200 million to build at least 100 stations by 2024, with 40 ready by the end of 2016, he said.
“There are still a lot of questions lingering about how practical it is even though Toyota launches next year,” said Maruta, the Volkswagen spokesman. “By the time it gets very usable by the normal customers, it’s maybe still a decade or two decades away.”
Still, Volkswagen is hedging its bets. The company is monitoring Toyota’s progress with the aim of staying within no more than three years of development work behind its Japanese rival in matching its fuel cell technology, Shoji said.
VW Says Fuel-Cell Cars Doomed to Struggle Beyond Japan - Bloomberg
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