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Toyota FCHV-adv Fleet Vehicles Survive the Snowpocalypse

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Nick Mittica with Toyota FCHV-adv vehicle

Nick Mittica shows off his Toyota FCHV-adv vehicle in the frigid temperatures.

If you’re anything like every other sentient creature anywhere in the United States right now, chances are pretty good you’re ever so slightly miffed at even the suggestion of snow and have at least once considered creating a device to tear a hole in the fabric of space-time in order to fast-forward to spring, consequences be damned (unless, of course, it lands you in an alternate reality where your obnoxiously-cheery neighbor is the ever-smiling despot of a dystopian society).

Then again, if you’re the Toyota Fuel Cell Vehicle, you aren’t terribly bothered by the doom-bringing Polar Vortex. According to Proton Onsite, who has a fleet of ten Toyota FCHV-adv fuel cell vehicles, the seemingly Antarctic weather has not affected their vehicles even in the slightest.

Toyota FCVH-adv vehicle buried under snow“We had another snow storm Tuesday night and this morning the temperature was 3 degrees,” says Mark Schiller, Proton vice president of business development, in Toyota’s press release. “I went out to my Toyota FCHV-adv and brushed off a foot of snow before starting the car right up. No problem.

“I continue to get range of about 300 miles despite the cold and blasting the heater,” Schiller added. “The vehicle performed flawlessly.”

Allentown’s Air Products also relates a similar experience with their FCHV-adv fuel cell vehicles. Says their commercial manager of hydrogen energy systems, Nick Mittica: “Our employees have driven it to community and business-related events during one of Pennsylvania’s worst winters in recent memory. The FCHV-adv has had great performance.”

This all reaffirms Toyota’s decade of rigorous testing in extreme climates, and the automaker no doubt hopes that the results will be enough to persuade potential buyers when the production version of the Toyota FCHV-adv launches in 2015.

So what say you, survivors of the Snowpocalypse: does the performance of the FCHV-adv in cold weather conditions give you enough evidence to consider going the hydrogen car route within the next two years? What would it take to convince you to make the switch?