Japan's top three automakers to spend $50 million to subsidize hydrogen stations

By Minami Funakoshi TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's top three automakers said on Wednesday they will spend up to 6 billion yen ($48.92 million) combined to subsidize the cost of operating hydrogen fuelling stations as the country aims to lead the world in developing cars that use the fuel. Japan is set to miss an ambitious target of having around 100 of the fuelling stations in place by March next year, as part of plans to develop a so-called hydrogen society to help cut carbon emissions and alleviate its heavy reliance on overseas fossil fuels. Toyota Motor Corp, Nissan Motor Co and Honda Motor Co said in a joint statement they would shoulder about one-third of the operational costs for hydrogen stations, limiting annual support to 11 million yen ($89,700) per station. The automakers will split the cost roughly based on the number of fuel-cell vehicles each company sells, Toyota Senior Managing Officer Kiyotaka Ise told a news conference. Toyota's Mirai, launched in December, is the only fuel-cell vehicle (FCV) on sale now and production is set to be limited to 700 in the first year. Honda has said it would roll out an FCV by next March, and Nissan's is not due until 2017 at the earliest. Only 74 stations are planned so far due to the high cost of building them. Hydrogen stations cost about $5 million to build and the government's subsidy for one location is capped at around half that. Even with the generous handouts, the stations are expected to be loss-making for at least the first decade, industry officials say. The subsidies from the automakers, expected to last until 2020, would include operational costs such as labor and refurbishment, they said in the statement. Fuel-cell cars, which run on hydrogen and emit only water, are also expensive, requiring big subsidies themselves. (Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Muralikumar Anantharaman)