According to a Bloomberg report, Yoshihiko Masuda, managing director of advanced vehicles at Toyota Motor Corp., has confirmed that the automaker has reduced the cost of manufacturing fuel-cell vehicles by 90 percent, and may likely commence the sales of its first retail hydrogen vehicle by 2015.

The cost of Toyota’s first hydrogen vehicle - which will be a sedan, with driving range similar to that of a gasoline-powered car - will be around $50,000.

Noting that the exorbitant manufacturing costs are the main hurdle in the development of hydrogen-fuel-cell cars, Masuda told Bloomberg that the Japanese carmaker has already slashed production costs for such vehicles to nearly one-tenth of earlier estimates, which were as high as $1 million per car. He further added that the costs need to be cut by another 50 percent before commencing retail sales.

Masuda, who was at Toyota’s US sales unit base in Torrance, California, said: “Our target is, we don’t lose money with introduction of the vehicle. Production cost should be covered within the price of the vehicle.”

Commenting on the potential advantage that fuel-cell vehicles have over battery vehicles, Jay Whitacre, a professor of materials science and engineering at Pittsburg’s Carnegie Mellon University, said that the former beat the latter in terms of “cost basis per car, range and performance.”