San Donato Milanese (Milan), 3 June 2019 – On the last stage of the Giro d'Italia bike race, where eight hydrogen-fuelled Toyota Mirai cars were used as support vehicles for event organisation, Toyota Motor Italia and Eni took the opportunity to announce their collaboration to speed up the spread of hydrogen mobility in Italy.

 The first phase of the project involves opening a hydrogen refuelling point at Eni's new service station in San Donato Milanese.

Eni is awaiting permissions to start work on the new station. It will be a multi-purpose facility that integrates seamlessly with the architecture of the new Eni Management Headquarters, currently under construction.

The station will sell premium petroleum products, along with advanced fuels like biomethane, hydrogen and electricity, thus enabling cars refuelling here to make a substantial contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions. Furthermore, the zero emission hydrogen available at the station will be produced with renewable energy by the station itself through electrolysis of water.

Toyota will take part in the project, providing its expertise and putting a fleet of ten Mirai cars on the road that will refuel at the Eni station. The users will be chosen in the coming months.

 If the San Donato project is successful, Eni will make hydrogen available at other stations in its network in the next few years.

 "Toyota was one of the first to decisively take on the task of electrifying its cars,” says Mauro Caruccio, CEO of Toyota Motor Italy. "We are a leader in hybrid electric technology, with over thirteen million vehicles on the world's roads as of today. For Toyota, hybrid electric technology is fundamental, a proper platform from which all forms of electrified propulsion derive from. It is exactly from the continuous evolution of our hybrid systems that Mirai was born, our first zero-emission hydrogen-powered car produced in series. In our opinion - continues Mauro Caruccio - the path towards zero emissions will inevitably pass also through a mobility based on hydrogen, a fundamental energy vector to allow a deeper diffusion of renewable energy sources. Time to take action came also for Italy, to start creating a hydrogen distribution network for cars. We are truly honored to be able to undertake this journey together with such an important partner as Eni, which embraces the same idea of ​​technology at the service of the environment”.

Giuseppe Ricci, Chief Refining & Marketing Officer of Eni, says: "The hydrogen station in San Donato Milanese is an important step on Eni's path to decarbonization for the reduction of climate-altering gas emissions. Achieving sustainable mobility requires a concerted approach where all technologies contribute. Through its hydrogen stations, Eni plans to further expand its range of fuels with low environmental impact. Out of an overall network of 4,400 service stations, 3,500 supply Eni Diesel+, the diesel that contains waste vegetable and frying oil and animal fats transformed into biofuel at Eni's bio-refineries in Venice and Gela. Two hundred service stations supply methane (two of them LNG) and soon biomethane as well.” Giuseppe Ricci concludes: "This agreement represents an alliance between two great companies, united by their commitment to a low-carbon future."