Toyota and Chevron Plan to Explore Hydrogen Business Opportunities
Major companies continue to search of opportunities to develop new businesses in the race to develop sustainable and low carbon fuel sources. U.S. oil giant Chevron and Toyota Motor North America announced they are exploring a strategic alliance on hydrogen. The goal of the partnership will be to catalyze the development of commercially viable, large-scale businesses in hydrogen, with the goal to advance a functional, thriving global hydrogen economy.
“Working towards a strategic alliance on hydrogen presents an opportunity to build a large-scale business in a low-carbon area that is complementary to our current offerings,” said Andy Walz, president of Chevron’s Americas Fuels & Lubricants. “This opportunity leverages our market position, assets, technology, and organizational capability and supports our efforts to help advance a lower-carbon future.”
Chevron and Toyota are seeking to work on three main strategic priorities they said. This will include collaborating on hydrogen-related public policy measures that support the development of hydrogen infrastructure as well as developing an understanding of current and future market demand for light-duty and heavy-duty fuel cell electric vehicles and supply opportunities for that demand. They also plan to explore opportunities to jointly pursue research and development in hydrogen powered transportation and storage.
“This is another important step toward building a hydrogen economy,” said Bob Carter, executive vice president, Toyota Motor North America. “Combining Toyota’s decades of experience in developing hydrogen powered fuel cell electric technology with Chevron’s deep resources in the energy sector has the potential to create new transportation choices for both consumers and businesses that move us toward our goal of carbon neutrality.”
Today’s announcement follows a partnership formed by Toyota with Corvus Energy to start the development and production of sustainable, large-scale maritime-certified hydrogen fuel cell systems. That project expects to showcase its first marine fuel cell system onboard a vessel in 2023 and to have its product marine certified and available for commercial delivery starting in 2024.
Toyota, which has 30 years’ experience in the development and production of fuel cells for the car market and other land-based applications, also announced that it is developing a hydrogen engine for use in motorsports. It has installed the engine on a racing vehicle based on Toyota’s Corolla Hatchback, which will begin racing in May of this year.