For years, Toyota has been at the forefront of hybrid technology. The automaker is also working on a number of vehicles with hydrogen fuel cell technology as an option.
“What I like to tell people is a fuel cell is just an electric vehicle,” explained Justin Ward, the general manager of Toyota’s new Hydrogen Headquarters in Gardena. “It has an electric motor just like an electric vehicle does. The real difference is how it generates electricity.”
In other words, within the vehicle itself by converting hydrogen into onboard power.
Toyota’s been developing fuel cells for nearly 30 years, and the company says there’s still a lot of potential moving forward. With that, they just dedicated the “H2HQ” as they call it.
“It’s really exciting to show how committed we are to this technology, to developing this technology,” said Ward during an invite-only tour of the massive facility.
A team of more than 50 people does just about everything from dynamometer power testing, to improving storage tanks, to things like refueling solution development and EPA certification.