12 July 2005
Toyota: GM fuel cell tie-up coming soon
- By Yuri Kageyama (AP)
Tokyo, July 11: Toyota’s president said on Monday a tie-up with US rival General Motors on fuel-cell vehicles is in its final stages —but promised to do his best to beat GM and Ford.
“They are good competition,” Katsuaki Watanabe said of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. in a group interview with foreign media. “We don’t want to lose.”
Mr Watanabe, 63, whose appointment was approved at a shareholders meeting in June, is taking helm as the Japanese automaker is on a pace to potentially surpass GM, the world’s largest carmaker, in global sales.
Toyota Motor Corp. aims to capture 15 per cent of the world’s market in the years following 2010. Depending on how the rivals fare, that could put Toyota ahead of GM.
Mr Watanabe said it’s just a matter of time before details can be hammered out for a deal with Detroit-based GM on fuel cells — a clean technology that is still largely experimental.
Fuel-cell vehicles emit virtually no pollution because they runs on the energy produced when hydrogen stored in the fuel tank combines with oxygen in the air to make water.
GM and Toyota Motor Corp. have a longtime partnership that does not involve stakes in each other. They run a plant in California and have a pact to share technology. A deal on fuel cell vehicles would be an important expansion of that agreement.