Toyota aims to sell 30,000 fuel-cell cars annually by 2020

The Japanese automaker target is to sell 30,000 cars a year that run on fuel-cell. Toyota will instead use hydrogen at its factories to achieve aspired environmental targets.

On Wednesday, Toyota laid out a series of its ambitious targets where the earliest will begin at the end of the decade. The car company said that emissions produced by manufacturing will be lessened to roughly half of 2001 levels by 2020, and roughly one-third by 2030. Generated emissions by new vehicles will be lashed out by 22% by the end of the decade, as compared to Toyota's 2010 global average. Toyota also said that emissions from new vehicles will be cut by 90% by the year 2050 and get rid of them completely at its factories including at new plants and new production lines, according to Fortune.

Toyota made its choice on hydrogen and hybrid cars while other competitions invest more into electric vehicles as a way to reduce tailpipe emissions. The company recently announced the sale of more than 30,000 fuel cell (hydrogen) vehicles and 1.5 million hybrid cars a year by 2020. Additionally, the sale of fuel cell buses will start by 2017, concentrating first in Tokyo.

Hydrogen cars are another matter launching its first fuel cell vehicle, the Mirai, in late 2014. To achieve its annual sales target by 2020, the production volume needs to increase tenfold from 2017. The car, which according to EPA has a 312-mile range, will have its first appearance in California, USA this fall.

In the US, there are only 12 public hydrogen fuel stations, according to the Department of Energy. Ten are situated in California which makes it the only possible market in the US for hydrogen cars.

The methods that Toyota plans to reach these goals involve the expected next-generation powertrains (hydrogen, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicles) likewise better tech in those vehicles. The company will also improve the way it builds cars making carbon dioxide emissions from production plants drops as well, according to Autoblog.

In a new document called The Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050, the Japanese carmaker says that it will not sell around 30,000 fuel cell vehicles a year by 2020, but will sell an entirely different fleet of vehicles by the middle of the century. That worldwide vehicle fleet will have average new-vehicle carbon dioxide emissions that are 90% lower.