Toyota Hydrogen Car Ready to Compete with Tesla

With all the fuss about electric cars in recent years, it has been tricky to find news on the real future of motoring, hydrogen fuel cells. Tesla haven’t had much in the way of direct competition recently, although it’s safe to say that hybrids have come a long way and have at least offered big improvements in efficiency. Yet even with a Tesla, that electricity you’re putting in your car still needs to come from somewhere, with most power stations still churning out plenty of pollution of their own, even if your car isn’t. Although Tesla are investing in solar powered charging stations to off-set this.

General Motors, Mercedes, Honda and Toyota are all focusing on Hydrogen fuel cells and Toyota have just revealed that their first hydrogen fuel cell car is ready for release in the US and Europe for Summer 2015. The car is expected to be priced at around seven million yet, or around $69,000 (although that’s no reflection on what the EU or US price would actually be).

The refuelling network for hydrogen certainly isn’t as established as electric, but it has to start somewhere and while electric may offer cheaper running cars it’s a far cry from the awesomeness of these new engines. Hydrogen may still be an electric car, but the fuel can be extracted from water cheaply and the only thing to come out of the hydrogen cars exhaust is clean water.

The new car from Toyota is capable of being refueled in around 5 minutes, with a range of around 430 miles. Compared to the over an hour it takes to deliver enough charge from 300 miles using a Tesla Supercharging station the benefits of hydrogen are immediately obvious.

[youtube width=”800″ height=”450″]http://youtu.be/98CidXDLuH8[/youtube]

Thank you Engadget for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Engadget.