Hydrogen-powered Toyota light show celebrates Oldham link

Car company Toyota staged a spectacular light show in Oldham as part of a film project marking the company’s aim toward a carbon-neutral future.

The light show was projected onto the front of Werneth’s Booth House on Tuesday, February 28 as part of a film being made by the company.

Toyota also showed off its latest Caetano hydrogen bus, Mirai hydrogen car, and even a hydrogen forklift truck at the event.

Toyota's Hydrogen-powered bus (Image: Jack Fifield, Newsquest)

The production was powered entirely by ‘green hydrogen’, which Toyota says makes it the first film production in Europe to do so, to the company’s knowledge.

A total of 300kg of hydrogen, equivalent to about 1,500 litres of diesel, was used to power all elements of production, including commissioning and filming.

Hydrogen-powered generators operated by Hydrologiq were used on site, with noise, as well as pollution, said to be much lower than that which would be produced by diesel-powered generators.

The film is set to be revealed in April.

Green hydrogen uses renewable energy to power the electrolysis of water required in its production to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen-powered generators (Image: Jack Fifield, Newsquest)

The film will tell the story of Toyota’s transformation from a weaving company to a car company.

It will also include Toyota’s introduction of technology such as hybrid engines and hydrogen-fuelled cars.

The Booth House building was historically the headquarters of the Platt Brothers.

The car company owes its success in part to Oldham’s textile industry.

Toyota was founded by Sakichi Toyoda, who worked as an assistant for his father in the carpentry trade.

Two of the three large projectors set up opposite Booth House (Image: Jack Fifield, Newsquest)

Then called Toyoda, the company worked in the loom business.

In 1929, the company sold a patent for its Type G automatic loom to Oldham’s Platt Brothers for £100,000, allowing it to produce and market the loom in countries except for Japan, China, and the USA.

The sale gave Toyoda enough money to enter the automobile industry, putting it on a path to the modern-day car company we see today, now called Toyota.

The building was illuminated (Image: Toyota)

The light show was projected by AV company QED Productions.

Technician Harry Ricardo explained how the projection was done: “We create a 3D visualization, we mock everything up so that we know before we come here that where we put stuff in real life, everything’s going to work and we’re going to be able to project everywhere that we want to.

Technician Harry Ricardo explaining the light installation (Image: Jack Fifield, Newsquest)

“The projectors know exactly what part of the building they’re pointing at so they know which part of the content to play.

“We installed everything in just under a day and then we spent a couple of evenings lining everything up to make sure all the right bits of video content hit the right parts of the building so that it looks like one big seamless image.”