Toyota to phase out gas-powered cars by 2050

Toyota today projected annual sales of fuel-cell vehicles will reach more than 30,000 within five years.

“When we first announced the Mirai, we said we were at the start of the age of hydrogen”, Kiyotaka Ise, a senior managing officer for Toyota Motor Corp., told reporters in Tokyo.

Among the goals, Toyota targets a 90 percent cut in average carbon dioxide emissions from new vehicles by 2050, compared with 2010 levels.

He and other Toyota officials insisted on the inevitability of their overall vision, stressing that the problems of global warming and environmental destruction made a move toward a hydrogen-based society a necessity.

This might seem like a lofty goal, but Toyota is definitely on the right track with the release of its new Mirai fuel-cell vehicle, which has zero emissions. Toyota’s Mirai fuel cell went on sale late previous year.

Now it has become the industry’s top seller of hybrid vehicles with a record of eight million vehicles in less than two decades.

Ford has opened a new innovation center in Palo Alto, Calif., where it is working on software, mapping and sensor technology that are key technologies in semi- and fully-autonomous cars. The expansive plan, reported by The Wall Street Journal, is part of Toyota’s broader strategy that includes selling 1.5 million hybrid vehicles by 2020. It is riding on the TNGA platform and making use of a 1.8 liter VVT-i four-cylinder gasoline burner, offering a thermal efficiency of 40 percent which is comparable to a diesel unit.

The corporation predicts that by 2050, vehicles running on internal combustion engines will have disappeared from the roads. These hybrids will aid a 22 percent decrease in emissions across the board, including Toyota’s non-hybrid vehicle lineup.

“We wanted to mobilize all of Toyota’s strengths”.

As for why it’s avoiding electric vehicles, Toyota believes they take too long to recharge. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, argued that building the necessary infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles is tough. Automakers are now rushing to resolve technological challenges to make their versions of eco-cars, such as fuel-cell, electric and hybrids, widespread.

As part of the green action plan, Toyota also aims to vastly reduce water usage and launch aggressive recycling programs.