A Study on the Competition and Cooperation between the Companies in the Fuel Cell Development

In order to obtain energy, the research on the combustion of hydrogen instead of oil is progressing now. The greatest feature of the fuel cell development is involving in many industries. This paper considers the development of the fuel cell vehicles in Japanese automobile companies, such as Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, from the viewpoint of both sides of “competition and cooperation.” The automobile industry is the most active fuel cell development industry, and occupies 37% of the fuel cell development in Japan. Toyota Motor is performing the fuel cell development not only by the independent developments but also by the joint developments. However, Honda Motor and Nissan Motor are performing the fuel cell developments only by the independent developments. The company cooperation by joint developments among different industries is the most important in order to acquire the de facto standards of the fuel cell products. From now on, the cooperation between the electrical machinery industry and the automobile companies will be very important in order to succeed in the fuel cell businesses.