Japan to push hydrogen fuel cell vehicles

The automobile industry may be heading towards an era of electrification, but Japan has not given up on fuel cell technology.

According to a report in business daily, The Nikkei, the Japanese government will launch a public-private initiative aimed at applying hydrogen used in oil refining to power fuel cell vehicles.

It states that with Japan moving towards the adoption of fuel cell vehicles by 2015, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry wants to secure a steady supply of high purity hydrogen with the hydrogen used in fuel cells 99.99 per cent pure, while the hydrogen that is used by oil distributors is about 90 per cent pure.

Now technology will be developed to extract the high purity hydrogen with the aim of creating a new source of income. The undertaking will cost around 500million yen over a three-year period from fiscal 2011 onwards with the ministry to pay around half these costs.

Source: TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk