September 26, 2003

Honda and Toyota expand their fuel cell car program

San Francisco and Sonoma, California - Honda and Toyota both announced they will expand their test fleet of fuel cell cars in the U.S.

American Honda announced that it will supply two Honda FCX hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles, the world's first commercially certified fuel cell car, to the City of San Francisco. The City of San Francisco will add the FCX fuel cell cars to its fleet of alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles. The City also intends to create hydrogen refueling infrastructure to support regular daily operation of the vehicles by city employees.

Toyota announced that two more vehicles would be put into service with the assistance of the University of California, Irvine and the University of California, Davis.

The FCHVs will be leased by UC Irvine's National Fuel Cell Research Center and by UC Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies. These will be the second Toyota fuel cell vehicles for each of the schools. Since the first wave of vehicles was announced in December 2002, the two FCHVs have logged nearly 6,000 miles.

The addition of these vehicles will bring the total number of FCHVs on the road to 18. Four will be with the universities, three with the California Fuel Cell Partnership, one at Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. and 10 with Japanese government agencies and private companies.

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