The Anonymous Widower

Toyota Won’t Give Up On Hydrogen, Teams Up With Truck Giants

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on TorqueCafe.

This is the sub heading.

Japanese car giant Toyota has signed a non-binding MoU to collaborate with Daimler Truck and Volvo Group on hydrogen fuel cells.

These three paragraphs add more details.

Toyota just won’t let its hydrogen-fuelled dreams die, this week announcing it wants to further develop fuel cell technology with two big players in the heavy vehicle market.

Daimler Truck (makers of Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Western Star and Fuso trucks) and the Volvo Group (responsible for Volvo, Mack and Renault trucks), already have a joint venture, cellcentric, which Toyota has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to join.

Split between equal shareholding, a joint press release said “the combination of the parties’ complementary experience and know-how will support and advance their joint objective to develop, produce and commercialise fuel cell systems for heavy-duty vehicles and other heavy-duty applications with comparable requirements”.

The rest of the article gives a summary of where Toyota are with hydrogen.

It is worth a thorough read.

Backing hydrogen you have Centrica, Ceres, Cummins, Daimler, Hyundai, JCB, INEOS, Kia, Ryse, Volvo, Wrightbus and a few others.

Will they prevail against a cynical world?

I think it will be one iconic vehicle, that excites the world. I will nominate.

• A 1000 km. range hydrogen-powered coach from Mercedes, Solaris, Volvo or Wrightbus.
• A large American-style pickup from Dodge with a Cummins engine or from Toyota.
• A large American-style truck.
• A remodelling of the iconic London new Routemaster bus with a hydrogen Cummins engine by Wrightbus.
• A small affordable hydrogen hatchback from the French, Toyota or the Koreans, based on a fuel cell and an electric transmission.

When I was a child the icon was a dragline called Big Geordie, who is shown in this video.

I suspect for some of the mining projects in the world today, a hydrogen-powered Big Geordie would make a good fist of it.

April 2, 2026 - Posted by AnonW | Hydrogen, Manufacturing, Transport/Travel | Big Geordie, Daimler, Fuel Cell, Hydrogen-Powered Coaches, hydrogen-Powered Construction Equipment, Hydrogen-Powered Toyota HiLux, Toyota, Volvo