Fukuoka City and Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) have signed a partnership agreement aiming for the early realization of a hydrogen society. They will work closely with Commercial Partnership Technologies Corporation (CJPT), which works on commercial projects, to promote a wide range of collaborative initiatives to achieve the goal. As a first step, they have commenced discussions regarding the introduction of fuel cell vehicles.

Fukuoka City has focused on the potential of hydrogen energy from an early stage and initiated the Hydrogen Leader City Project. As part of the project, the city launched the world’s first initiative to produce hydrogen from public household sewage and supply it to fuel cell vehicles. It was also the first city in Japan to undertake various verification tests for trucks and motorcycles equipped with fuel cell technologies.

Toyota views hydrogen as a promising energy form to achieve carbon neutrality. In order to become a hydrogen society, it has sought to broaden customer choice through sales of its Mirai fuel cell vehicle, development of hydrogen-engine vehicles, and promotion of commercial vehicles in collaboration with CJPT, etc. The company has also promoted wide-ranging partnerships that extend beyond the automotive industry.

Fukuoka City and Toyota have held numerous talks with regard to making hydrogen more familiar to residents, and encouraging its sustainable and practical use. In fact, their first collaboration in the field of hydrogen was implemented in November 2021 during the final round of the Super Taikyu Series. In this race, Toyota used hydrogen produced from the city’s public household sewage to power its hydrogen-engine vehicles.

Under the terms of the partnership agreement, Fukuoka City and Toyota in cooperation with CJPT will discuss a range of other hydrogen-related topics as follows: developing and using vehicles that can support social infrastructure and creating logistics models for them, using hydrogen energy at resident-centered facilities and events, and revising the regulations required for realizing a hydrogen society. To begin with, discussions are being held on the use of fuel cell vehicles for school meal delivery trucks and the city’s garbage trucks, as well as deploying Moving e mobile power generation and supply systems.

Going forward, Fukuoka City, Toyota and CJPT will work together to develop and verify technologies related to producing, transporting, and using hydrogen. By helping to expedite the implementation of these technologies, the aim is to build a society in which hydrogen plays a major role. They also plan to actively engage in initiatives that contribute to the realization of carbon neutrality both in Japan and around the world.

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