THE chief architect of Toyota’s first production fuel cell vehicle says he has a solution to Australia’s tainted brown coal reputation – turn the coal into fuel for hydrogen-powered cars.

Yoshikazu Tanaka, the chief engineer of Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell car, told Wheels that he believed converting brown coal to hydrogen fuel would help drive adoption of the technology here.

“Unfortunately we [Toyota] are not an energy company,” Tanaka said on the eve of the official opening of the Tokyo motor show this week. “Producing hydrogen, we believe, is not our business.

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Highly polluting brown coal is a simmering topic in Australia, with highly charged political wrangling between the Greens and state and federal governments over the future of coal-based electricity generation in NSW and Victoria.

According to Tanaka, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Japan has already started work on building a full-scale plant in Victoria that will one day convert coal-based resources into hydrogen.

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Toyota has since launched its Mirai fuel cell vehicle – the first production version of the technology in the world – but announced that it would not come to Australia because there is currently no way to refuel it.

Toyota’s chicken-and-egg approach to the technology is in contrast to rival Hyundai, which has flagged plans to introduce a fuel-cell powered vehicle potentially based on the Tucson SUV to the Australian market, and help kick-start the refuelling technology.

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“All manufacturers are trying to get to a situation where they have emissions from the vehicle that are virtually zero,” he said.

“So it’s not a short-term political issue, it’s a longer-term infrastructure development and it requires not just government … there’s got to be private enterprise as well. We may have to get involved, other car manufacturers may have to get involved just to bring this kind of future to a reality.”