Toyota Cleans California Air Using Eco-Friendly Billboards

The tables are turning in Los Angeles these days when it comes to smog. For decades, the City of Angels has battled a daily haze that comes with the crushing number of cars on its congested freeways.

However, many automakers are now producing vehicles with lower emissions, and no emissions in the case of the Toyota Mirai fuel cell-powered sedan. Toyota is now not only leading with what powers its vehicles, but also advertising the air clean.

The Japanese maker is showing off its new zero-emissions vehicle with series of 37 eco-billboards in L.A. and San Francisco coated in a smog-reducing layer of titanium dioxide catalyst.

The billboards will create 24,960 square feet of pollution scrubbing surface and reverse the equivalent of 5,285 vehicles worth of nitrogen dioxide (NOx) emissions per month. NOx is a key ingredient in acid rain and smog.

(Fuel cell vehicles need more time, Toyota chairman says. Click Here for the story.)

This “catalytic converter” of billboards uses a titanium dioxide coated vinyl to purify the surrounding air, Toyota officials explain.

“Toyota consistently searches for new environmental technologies across all operations.  When Clear Channel Outdoor Americas brought us the opportunity, we saw it as a perfect match,” said Mark Angelacos, advanced technology general manager, Toyota Motor North America, Inc.

(Toyota shifting resources to battery power. Click Here for the story.)

“This new campaign delivers Toyota Mirai’s ‘vehicle of change’ message on a medium that lives up to that promise.”

When oxygen reacts with the energized titanium dioxide catalyst, NOx is converted to nitrate and removed from the air.  The light-activated, smog-reducing billboards continue to purify the air as long as light, humidity, airflow and the titanium dioxide coating are present.

Toyota is working with PURETi Group on the technology used on the eco-billboards, and Clear Channel Outdoor Americas has exclusive usage rights in the outdoor advertising category.

(Toyota studying hydrogen heavy truck applications. Click Here for more.)

Toyota highlighted the eco-billboard campaign during the first Environmental Media Association Impact Summit in Beverly Hills, Calif.  A Mirai hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, wrapped with the titanium dioxide coated vinyl, purified the air as guests entered the event.