Thoughts from Japan and recent developments

Well I am back from Japan and have made some observations. I wanted to see what the city provision for EV or FCV was in place. I visited Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama and Tokyo with a brief day in Nagoya. I saw no charging infrastructure of any size and only 2 EV in all my travels which seems to back up the sales figures. I did find a quick charger in a holiday resort called Atami. I repeat I was looking in cities and not highways. I also visited the Japan Society of Automotive Engineers expo in Yokohama, which used to feature a lot of alternative fuel technology. Apart from a ride and drive session there was very little evidence of ULEV technology at all. This is a departure from previous years.

So what does this mean? Has EV not taken off or was I in the wrong place at the wrong time? Is it a lull in the market waiting for longer range batteries? With regard to FCV there was not one company exhibiting any technology at all. I have also noticed on return that we again have current vehicles being modified to produce FCV equivalents i.e. the Kangoo and Transit. The UK has seen the demise of companies who have taken existing power trains from OEM's and modified them with government money, only to go out of business, as they are simply too expensive. If a FCV van is viable would the OEM not be producing them? We know the technology works so why do we keep repeating the same trials?

I also got the feed back that Toyota is struggling with the question of FCV vs EV. Its heart is in FCV but the markets are demanding EV. If Toyota does relent and go EV a big question is will it go CCS or CHAdeMO. If it does go CCS the CHAdeMO standard will effectively be supported by Nissan/Mitsubishi and possibly Korea.

So in summary the situation in Japan is not clear with regard to alternative fuel vehicles, despite the rhetoric in the papers. One thing to remember in Japan is that it is an earthquake zone and underground gas pipes are not popular.