Toyota Gazoo Racing committed to internal combustion

Toyota Gazoo Racing, the performance arm of the world’s biggest car-maker, is committed to producing internal combustion-engined (ICE) vehicles as long as it can, but they won’t necessarily be powered by petrol.

In an audience with Australian media last week, Toyota Gazoo Racing president Tomoya Takahashi said the high-performance sub-brand is examining many avenues to keep ICE cars alive.

“[GR] is a passionate brand, so we want to use internal combustion engine as much as possible,” he said.

“It is not the engine that is bad, it’s the carbon that’s bad.

“By using hybrid technology we can reduce carbon emissions or using a carbon-neutral fuel – e-fuel or biofuel.

“Globally there are discussions there is not going to be 100 per cent EVs. As you know, our direction is multi-pathway. At this moment Toyota is making profit and we are investing in future technologies.”

A number of manufacturers have in recent months backed away from earlier commitments to go all-EV by 2030 – including Ford, Bentley and Mercedes-Benz – and the EU granted an exemption to e-fuel vehicles from its 2035 ICE ban.

Apart from plans to release its first EV in 2026, Toyota Gazoo Racing currently has two prototypes that burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine – a GR Corolla that competes in the Japanese Super Taikyu race series and a GR Yaris that has completed demonstration runs at various motorsport events.

carsales has also sampled a Toyota HiAce fitted with a hydrogen-fuelled engine. Burning hydrogen in an ICE undoubtedly works – as BMW proved with the Hydrogen 7 (Series) sedan it billed as the world’s first hydrogen-powered car in 2006 – but it does present significant challenges, primarily excessive nitrogen oxide emissions and the storage of the hydrogen itself.

Toyota itself admits it’s unclear whether burning hydrogen (rather than using it to create electricity, as in a fuel-cell electric vehicle) will be suitable for performance car applications.

The future of e-fuels is also opaque, even if ICE cars that run on synthetic fuel have been spared from Europe’s effective ban on diesel and petrol cars from 2035.

Porsche has invested heavily in the technology, with its existing plant in Chile to be joined soon by others in Texas and Tasmania in the hope that increased scale will bring the price down from the $5-10/litre currently quoted, depending on which source you believe.

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