BMW and Toyota collaborate on hydrogen SUV that should be on sale from 2025
BMW and Toyota are working together to develop a hydrogen car that should go on sale in 2025. BMW says it is a mass production SUV. Both companies are working on their own hydrogen cars and have been developing hydrogen technology together since 2013.
In any case, BMW will mass-produce and sell the hydrogen car from 2025, says BMW board member Pieter Nota, responsible for the company’s sales department. against Nikkei. It is not clear whether Toyota will also take the car into production, but it is obvious. The two manufacturers have been working together on cars for some time, such as the BMW Z4 and the Toyota Supra that both manufacturers now sell.
According to Nota, hydrogen cars are ‘especially relevant’ for larger SUVs. Hydrogen cars remain important for BMW, ‘because we don’t want to focus all our investments in one technology’, says Nota. That is why the manufacturer wants to develop hydrogen cars in addition to battery-electric cars. The SUV that is now under development at BMW and Toyota works with hydrogen cells, where hydrogen is converted into electricity, which is used to power the wheels.
The two car manufacturers have been working together since 2013 to the development of hydrogen cars. The companies then said that they wanted to develop the required fuel cell stack, hydrogen tank, electric motor and battery together. The batteries of fuel cell cars are normally smaller buffer batteries that enable, for example, regenerative braking. When the collaboration was announced, the two companies gave 2020 as the year in which the mentioned parts had to be ready.
Apart from the new hydrogen SUV, Toyota and BMW are working on their own hydrogen vehicles. For example, the German carmaker will take over later this year the iX5 Hydrogen in production. BMW has no plans to sell many of these SUVs and speaks of “small-scale production.” It will have two fuel tanks that can each hold about six kilograms of hydrogen. It is not known how long the iX5 Hydrogen should be able to drive with this.
Toyota has been selling hydrogen cars since 2014 and introduced the second version of the Mirai at the end of 2020. This sedan has three hydrogen tanks with a combined capacity of 5.6kg. This allows the hydrogen car to travel approximately 650 kilometers. In addition to the two manufacturers mentioned, Hyundai is also working on hydrogen cars. This manufacturer showed its second hydrogen car, the Nexo, in 2018.
The BMW iX5 Hydrogen that should go into production later this year. It is not known what the new hydrogen SUV should look like.