Japan bets big on making fuel-cell cars a near-future reality

TOKYO, June 25 (Reuters) :  Japan's government and top carmakers, including Toyota Motor Corp, are joining forces to bet big that they can speed up the arrival of the fuel cell era: a still costly and complex technology that uses hydrogen as fuel and could virtually end the problem of automotive pollution.

Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker, unveiled its first mass-market fuel-cell car on Wednesday, which is due to go on sale in Japan by end-March next year priced at around 7 million yen ($68,600). A US and European launch will follow in the summer.Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's growth strategy, announced the day before, also included a call for subsidies and tax breaks for buyers of fuel-cell vehicles, relaxed curbs on hydrogen fuel stations and other steps under a road map to promote hydrogen energy.

That will bolster plans by Toyota and Honda Motor Co, Japan's No.3, to start fuel-cell vehicle sales in 2015.

"This is the start of a long challenge to make hydrogen a standard feature in society and to make the fuel-cell vehicle an ordinary automobile," Toyota Executive Vice-President Mitsuhisa Kato told a news conference.

With two of Japan's three biggest automakers going all in on fuel cells, the country's long-term future as an automotive powerhouse could now hinge largely on the success of what they hope will be a key technology of the next few decades.