Toyota to hold world premiere of third-gen fuel cell tech

In a 2023 interview with Toyota Motor Europe’s Eugene Reginald, the then project lead for Truck and Bus Fuel Cell applications, he noted that development of a third-generation fuel cell stack was underway.

Moving forward to 2025, Toyota Motor Corporation has now announced that it has completed development of that same third-gen hydrogen fuel cell (FC) technology.

New third-gen fuel cell from Toyota is said to be easier to install in commercial vehicles (Photo: Toyota Motor)

The all-new system will have its world premiere at the H2 & FC Expo in Tokyo, Japan (February 19-21, 2025).

According to details released by Toyota, the new third-gen FC system is designed to meet the ‘particular needs’ of the commercial sector. Specifically, the FC system is said to have twice the anticipated lifetime of the previous version, making it equivalent to a conventional diesel engine.

Complementing that, the new system offers 1.2 times the fuel efficiency of the gen two model, which should help to reduce operating costs.

Perhaps most importantly, Toyota has been able to achieve significant cost reductions across the cell design and manufacturing processes, which should help to make FC-powered vehicles less expensive to end customers.

While the third-gen system is expected to feature in a passenger model (the current fuel cell model is the Toyota Mirai), the tech is set to feature in heavy-duty commercial vehicles from 2026 (at the earliest).

Toyota has been supplying fuel cell systems for bus, truck, rail and power gen applications since 2019. More then 2,700 units have been delivered to around 100 customers.

The manufacturing giant stated that many of the improvements across this third-gen system has been based on customer insights, including those from Tokyo and Fukushima prefectures as they look to implement the tech intended to support a ‘hydrogen society’.

Power Progress will publish more details of the new third-gen FC system as they become available.