Last November, Japanese automaker Toyota Motor demonstrated prototype of the Yaris racing car, equipped with a power plant modified for hydrogen operation from the Corolla model. As it turns out, Toyota’s partner in the development of hydrogen-powered internal combustion engines is Yamaha Motor, which has been conducting similar research for the past five years.
Image Source: Yamaha Motor
Through cooperation with Toyota, Yamaha modified V-shaped eight-cylinder internal combustion engine from the Lexus RC F coupe, with a working volume of five liters. The cylinder heads, intake tract and injectors have undergone changes – Denso helped to improve the latter for working with hydrogen. As a result, a five-liter internal combustion engine, converted to consume hydrogen, was able to produce 450 horsepower at 6800 rpm and 540 Nm of torque at 3600 rpm. The original eight-cylinder engine has a camber angle of 90 degrees and is equipped with 32 valves.
Of course, even from the illustration provided, it can be judged that such a power plant will require some effort from engineers to optimize the layout inside the vehicle. It is enough to recall that the sports version of the Toyota Yaris had the entire back row and trunk occupied by hydrogen cylinders to understand the difficulties in adapting this technology to serial use. However, as the world’s largest automaker, Toyota is trying to dictate its own approaches to achieving carbon neutrality, and the conversion of internal combustion engines to hydrogen fuel consumption is one of them. At least, at the stage of transition from internal combustion engines to electric traction, it may be in demand in terms of the efficiency of using the existing production infrastructure.
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