At this year’s Busworld, the Portuguese bus manufacturer CaetanoBus has presented a new hydrogen-powered Bus named H2.City Gold, which uses the fuel cell system from the Toyota Mirai.

Toyota had made the announcement a little more than a year ago that its fuel cell systems would also be delivered to the Portuguese bus manufacturer CaetanoBus in the future. Now, the first product of the cooperation was presented at Busworld: The hydrogen bus H2.City Gold will start production in middle of 2020.

Before launch, the prototype will go on tour in various European cities over the next few months. With this hydrogen bus, the stacks are mounted on the roof and convert the hydrogen stored in five tanks with a total capacity of 37.5 kilograms into electrical energy. This means that the city bus can travel up to a range of 400 kilometers. When refuelling, the vehicle can be refuelled with up to 350 bar in less than nine minutes.

The choice of partnering with CaetanoBus came as the two manufacturers had previously cooperated on vehicle development, as Toyota Motor Europe president Dr. Johan van Zyl explains: “Thanks to their longstanding relationship with Toyota, their understanding of market requirements and their technical capabilities, CaetanoBus was the ideal partner to start the development of our powertrain sales activities in Europe.”

The newest generation of the Toyota Mirai will be presented at the Tokyo Motor Show, with the commercial launch taking place in the middle of next year. Toyota is slowly but decidedly bringing the fuel cell technology to the mainstream, normalising the processes and technology. Cooperations to develop fuel cell solutions based on the Mirai have also been taking place in a variety of areas in the past months, as Toyota aims to make good on their mass market promise. For example, a project in cooperation with the US American truck manufacturer Kenworth showed its first results in April.

newsroom.toyota.eu