Toyota to test hydrogen-powered drayage truck

With a range of 200 miles, the drayage truck will operate from the ports of Los Angeles and Long beach to local warehouses.    Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) said it will begin testing a drayage truck powered by a hydrogen fuel cell at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach later this year.
   “Toyota believes that hydrogen fuel cell technology has tremendous potential to become the powertrain of the future,” TMNA Executive Vice President Bob Carter said of the project, which the company has dubbed “Project Portal.”
   A Class 8 truck using a chassis manufactured by Kenworth and Toyota “inserted all of our technology under the hood,” said Jana Hartline, a spokeswoman for the company.
   The truck will use two fuel cell stacks from Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai passenger car to charge batteries that will power the electric motor, which will have a range of about 200 miles.
   “The feasibility study is kicking off this summer,” Hartline said. “We are starting with one truck and we’re going to see how it performs on the shorter routes in and around the port. There is the possibility as far as expanding range or adding more vehicles.”
   The company is working with the Port of Los Angeles to select a drayage company to operate the truck.
   Toyota has a partnership with Hino Motors in Japan that was launched late last year to manufacture buses powered with fuel cells.
   Hartline said the filling station for the truck will be located at Toyota’s logistics facility at the Port of Long Beach where it receives automobiles from overseas.
   “The idea is to have the truck fill up in the morning, run the truck all day long and then come back and fill up the next day,” she said.
   Toyota does not intend to start manufacturing heavy duty trucks, but wanted to test the scalability and robustness of fuel cell technology in a heavy duty application, she explained.
   “We’re also doing it from an environmental perspective,” she said, and to help the port meet its environmental goals.