NAGOYA: Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it will test small fuel cell trucks jointly with Japanese convenience store operators Seven-Eleven Japan Co., FamilyMart Co. and Lawson Inc., staring next spring.

Each of the three chains will operate one newly developed fuel cell truck for the experiment, in which issues such as the practicality of such vehicles, the deployment of hydrogen fueling stations and fuel costs will be studied.

Fuel cell vehicles are powered by electricity produced by reactions between hydrogen and oxygen and do not emit carbon dioxide, which causes greenhouse effects.

While lack of fueling stations is a challenge for fuel cell vehicles, it is considered that if commercial vehicles powered by fuel cells are more widely adopted, demand for hydrogen will increase and lead to more fuel cell vehicles on the streets as a result.

Toyota has been already conducting a similar test with Seven-Eleven.

The trucks to be provided to the three chains will be jointly developed by Toyota and Hino Motors Ltd.,  a commercial vehicle arm of Toyota.

The vehicles will have a cruising range of some 400 kilometers, which is twice that for the vehicles being tested by Seven-Eleven, Toyota said.

JIJI Press