Toyota hydrogen headquarters opens in California

The automaker has established the “H2HQ” for its North American hydrogen business.

The newly established H2HQ (hydrogen headquarters) facility will take care of research and development (R&D), commercialization, and sales for fuel cells and other Toyota hydrogen-related products and technology. The facility, which is located in Gardena, near the Los Angeles and Long Beach port complex, reaffirms Toyota Motor North America’s (TMNA) commitment to support a hydrogen economy.  

Former research center gets a makeover.

The Toyota hydrogen headquarters might be new, but the physical facility itself isn’t. The company renovated its existing TMNA R&D California Office in Gardena. Formerly, the building was a research center, which supported or initiated an array of fuel cell electric products. For example, the research center’s Fuel Cell Development team played a key role in supporting the development of Toyota’s light-duty Mirai (back in 2015), as well as supporting infrastructure growth throughout California, among other feats.

The research center has been redesigned to accommodate the vision for the new Toyota H2HQ office workspace.  In addition to being redesigned for its teams working from R&D, commercialization planning and sales, there are plans to add more features in the future, such as a flexible microgrid, customer education center, and so on.

“Renaming this facility as North American Hydrogen Headquarters represents our leadership in fuel cell development creating real-world products to help reduce carbon emissions,” said Ted Ogawa, President and CEO, Toyota Motor North America in a recent news release announcing the renaming of the facility. 

There are multiple Toyota hydrogen headquarters around the globe.

While the newly established Toyota hydrogen HQ in California may be the first from the automaker giant in North America, it isn’t its first or even its second facility dedicated to furthering hydrogen research, development, products, or technology.

In 2023, Toyota Motor Corporation created what it’s dubbed the “Hydrogen Factory” in Japan. It is the result of reorganizing its hydrogen business, with the goal being to bring all H2-related work under a single location and speedup customer-oriented product development and production in fuel cell or other products related to hydrogen.

Ater the announcement of the Hydrogen Factory in Japan, Toyota Motor Europe revealed its own “Hydrogen Factory” for the purpose of accelerating the growth of Toyota’s hydrogen business and to boost a broader roll-out of H2 ecosystems and infrastructure throughout Europe.

Will the new Toyota H2HQ be key to building a large-scale H2 economy in North America?

The goal of the Toyota hydrogen-focused facility is to drive North American-led H2 initiatives and support the localization duty fuel cell opportunities, port vehicle applications, stationary fuel cell power generation, etc.). That said, whether this will lead to any significant progress in making an H2 economy a reality is anyone’s guess at this point.

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