Toyota Motor Corp. will form a joint venture with Beijing SinoHytec Co., a Chinese fuel-cell manufacturer, to produce key systems for fuel-cell vehicles.
Toyota and SinoHytec signed a contract on Monday to form Toyota Sinohytec Fuel Cell Co., a 50-50 joint venture with a total investment of approximately 8 billion yen ($72.8 million).
The Japanese automaker and SinoHytec are jointly working on fuel-cell bus research and development.
The new company will be based in Beijing’s Economic-Technological Development Area, a high-end manufacturing hotspot, and will begin operations in 2023 with a production capacity of 3,000 fuel-cell components per year.
Toyota and five other companies founded the Unified Fuel Cell System R&D (Beijing) Co. in August to build fuel-cell vehicle systems. Toyota Sinohytec Fuel Cell is a joint venture between Toyota and Sinohytec, which will produce and market these systems.
The first product from the new company will be based on Toyota’s fuel cell system used in MIRAI and has an improved output power for application in commercial vehicles. According to the statement of SinoHytec, the new product is scheduled for China’s market launch in 2021.
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