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FUELING THE FUTURE AUTOMAKERS AND CONSUMERS WEIGH ALTERNATIVE FUEL OPTIONS BY SCOTT SOWERS, AIADA CONTRIBUTING EDITOR W alking through an auto show reveals where auto manufacturers are placing their bets on what the public will buy and where the future of vehicles is taking all of us. A good example of this is Toyota’s FCV Plus, which was officially unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in late October of 2015. It remains among the most conceptual of the concept cars and is still turning heads two years later. The car is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell and can export any extra electricity it generates to the power grid. At its unveiling, Project Manager Takeo Moriai of Toyota said, “We imagined what a hydrogen-based society might look like in the fairly near future, and decided to design a car that could be useful beyond mobility.” Honda has been tinkering with a similar concept at its ”Honda Smart Home” in Davis, California, where a house equipped with pho- tovoltaic panels on the roof provides enough juice to run the house and charge a small fleet of Honda electric vehicles in the garage. Ryan Harty, Environmental Business Development Manager for Honda said, “For us, the Smart Home is very much about energy management in designing a home that needs as little energy as pos- sible and integrating the transportation with the home in a way that is fundamentally a good use of energy.” continued on page 20 SPRING 2017 | AutoDealer 19