On Friday, Toyota announced that it will begin leasing its FCHV-adv to Japan’s Ministry of the Environment plus a few other government entities. In early June, Toyota had announced that it had acquired certification from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to put this new, advanced vehicle on the road.
Toyota has been working on both its Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) on the fuel cell stack and hydrogen storage tanks for the FCHV-adv. The improvement in the fuel cell mainly involves cold weather starts and handling of internally created water within the stack.
The range of the FCHV-adv has also improved with the development and addition of the 70Mpa high-pressure hydrogen tanks, which improve the range of the Toyota SUV to over 500 miles. Toyota first began leasing the older model FCHV in 2002 to the Japanese government.
The current lease of the Toyota FCHV-adv will last for 30 months and will cost a little over $7,700 per month, USD, which is a hefty price in comparison to the lease agreement of the Honda FCX Clarity at $600 per month. The Toyota lease is expect to garner more real world testing of the vehicle so that the number one Asian automaker can take another step towards commercialization.