But it might not be what you think.
Toyota
Toyota has overhauled their large off-roaders in recent years, moving all-new versions of the Toyota Land Cruiser, Lexus LX, Toyota Tundra and Toyota Sequoia onto the new TNGA-F truck platform. Perhaps the most significant change came under the hood: Toyota swapped out the old, inefficient 5.7-liter V8 motor for conventional and / or hybrid versions of the carmaker’s twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6. But rumors from Japan suggest Toyota may not be finished the V8 after all…although it could return in a somewhat unorthodox form.
CarBuzz found a rumor from Japanese publication Best Car Web that Toyota is working with Yamaha on a V8 combustion engine — an engine that would run on hydrogen. The engine is based on Toyota’s 2UR-GSE engine, the outstanding naturally-aspirated 5.0-liter V8 used in the Lexus LC 500. The test unit purportedly puts out 449 horsepower and 398 lb-ft of torque, which would put it in a similar realm as the current turbo V6 engines.
The rumor has Toyota working on the engine with a production vehicle in mind: the Land Cruiser. But since developing a bespoke engine for the Land Cruiser wouldn’t make much sense, you would likely see that engine potentially appear in the Tundra and elsewhere in the TNGA-F lineup.
Despite launching an onslaught of new EV concepts, Toyota has been one of the biggest EV skeptics and one of hydrogen’s most prominent proponents. So them exploring a hydrogen combustion V8 would not be a total surprise. We don’t know how soon this engine — if it does materialize in production form — will arrive.
Hydrogen combustion is different from using hydrogen fuel cells to power an electric motor like the Mirai. And there are some major hurdles to that technology being road-ready, like hydrogen’s relatively low energy density compared to gasoline, harmful emissions produced by hydrogen combustion and the lack of hydrogen infrastructure in many parts of the world. And even if Toyota could make hydrogen combustion work, there would need to be a substantial market for it.
Keyword: Toyota Could Be Working on a V8 for the Tundra, Rumor Suggests