Toyota unveils a new fuel cell truck for work at the Port of Los Angeles

Zero-emission vehicles are not only on the market to serve as transport for people and light loads. Even large trucks hauling tons are becoming clean vehicles, and little by little we are seeing trucks and other types of tractors that use clean energy and produce no polluting emissions. Toyota has just unveiled a new tractor model that runs on fuel cell and that has been assigned to work at the Port of Los Angeles.

Toyota has worked with Kenworth to create this new fuel cell tractor model. It is an evolution of the two models that were already being tested at this port, named Alpha and Beta, which were part of the so-called Project Portal. The tractor is based on the Kenworth T680 Series 8 and uses the fuel cell technology developed by Toyota.

No data is available on the technology applied in these tractors, but sources from both companies assure that work has been done to improve the characteristics of these tractors and that the technology equipping their predecessors has been upgraded. This means that the range has increased and now reaches, presumably, 450 kilometers on a single charge. According to the data provided, this is twice the distance such vehicles usually cover each day at the port.

Ten units of these tractors will be built under the Zero-and-Near-Zero Emission Freight Facilities Project program and will be dedicated to work at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Toyota Logistics Services will manage four of these trucks. This is the division of the Japanese company responsible for distributing Toyota products in the United States, and three others will be used by UPS.

In this whirlwind of electric vehicles and low emissions, fuel cell vehicles are not exactly the most popular. Even so, Toyota plans to continue with this type of zero-emission vehicle. For them, it is a clean, scalable technology that can prove very practical in the zero-emission vehicle market. For now, you can see these trucks in action at their workplace.

https://youtu.be/XehEd-PiQuo