Toyota Motor and four other Japanese automobile and motorcycle manufacturers have come together to partner with them to explore the opportunities of environmentally friendly fuels for internal combustion engines.
This involves hydrogen, but also synthetic fuels based on biomass.
The companies advocate that efforts to achieve climate neutrality do not lead to a monoculture of electric cars that are powered by batteries.
Patrick Welter
Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.
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"The enemy is carbon, not the internal combustion engine," said Akio Toyoda, president of market leader Toyota, at a car race in Okayama Prefecture.
"We need different solutions," said Toyoda.
“This is the way to tackle climate neutrality.” Toyoda also gathered the heads of Mazda Motor, Subaru, Yamaha Motor and Kawasaki Heavy Industries there.
This line-up shows how important it is for companies not to lose their openness to drive solutions other than electric motors on the way to climate-neutral transport.
Hydrogen in an internal combustion engine
Toyota has been working in cooperation with Yamaha for years on internal combustion engines that use hydrogen instead of gasoline or diesel as fuel. During the race of the "Super Taikyu" series, Toyoda personally drove a racing car with a hydrogen engine on the racetrack. The Toyota boss avoided the question of when he saw the possibility of commercializing the technology. He emphasized that Toyota is also developing battery-powered vehicles with electric motors to meet demand in some markets. The market leader is two-pronged when it comes to hydrogen. With the Mirai fuel cell vehicle, Toyota already has a vehicle on the market that uses a chemical reaction to generate electricity that feeds an electric motor.
In addition to Toyota, Subaru announced that it would take part in the racing series in the coming year with cars powered by synthetic fuel based on biomass. Mazda Motor gets in with a car powered by biodiesel. Yamaha and Kawasaki said they are considering jointly developing hydrogen internal combustion engines for motorcycles. According to the information, Honda and Suzuki will also participate in the project. How far the cooperation between the four motorcycle manufacturers should go remained unclear.
The plea for a multitude of environmentally friendly drive technologies is based on the conviction that different regions require different solutions.
Europe, with its high population density and the extensive power grid, is then well suited for battery-powered electric cars, while elsewhere internal combustion engines with environmentally friendly fuels could be more suitable.
Toyoda also pointed to 5.5 million auto-related jobs in Japan.
Smaller companies that are completely focused on the internal combustion engine as suppliers are extremely concerned about what is happening, Toyoda said.
He is also the president of the Japanese Auto Industry Association.