Toyota is one of the few still trying to make hydrogen a thing, and nobody really seems to be as interested as with all the electric concepts spewing out of Europe. Toyota’s FCV Plus is trying really hard to change that, offering to not only run itself with hydrogen, but power your home as well.
If you’ve ever been connected to a busy Starbuck’s wifi connection, you’ll know how valuable your phone’s wifi hot-spot feature can be.
Toyota want’s to take a similar approach to the functionality of a car, in this example taking place of the smartphone with hot-spot capability, by having the car be capable of powering your house. A power hot-spot.
The FCV Plus is a hydrogen powered concept car, shown off at the Tokyo Motor Show. Each wheel houses an individual motor, powered electrically by a hydrogen fuel cell stack located between the front two wheels. This set up creates a very spacious interior for the car while keeping compact external dimensions.
When the car is parked, it - in concept - can connect to an external hydrogen source (something far larger than a car’s tank capacity) to power a home or building. Toyota sees this potential being used to provide self-sustainable clean energy as part of the local infrastructure for small communities.
Of course these future hydrogen-powered communities are as-of-yet nonexistent, so for now the car is a vision of a possible future, and just one of five concepts Toyota dropped at the Tokyo Motor Show.
Your smartphone can be used for almost anything these days, so why not add some additional functionality to the car?
PHOTO CREDIT: TOYOTA
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