Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

https://carbuzz.com/toyota-mirai-massive-depreciation-one-year/

by iancmceachern • 5 months ago

173 483 5 months ago

sremani• 5 months ago

I once did some research on Mirai and found at that time Plano, TX where Toyota NA is Headquartered did not have a Hydrogen station. Not sure if they have one now. It is such a limited car and because of the infrastructure stuck to LA and San Diego, I guess.

Pure range is 500+ miles but not many Hydrogen stations.

giancarlostoro• 5 months ago

This is one of those cars that's interesting to me, but I don't know that we'll ever go this route in a significant amount. Problem is how complex it is to create hydrogen, although 'green hydrogen' is a thing, it would take quite a bit regardless. Interesting to note that if we could extract only 2% of the hydrogen burried under the earth, we could power the entire world for over 200 years. Which is crazy to think about.

The other interesting thing about these cars is the output is water out of the tailpipe.

pjc504• 5 months ago

It's very easy to create hydrogen from fossil natural gas. Which is the real motivation behind 99% of H2 projects; continue to emit CO2, just hidden from the end user.

Battery electric is now pretty much inevitable.

pfdietz11• 5 months ago

In fairness, hydrogen from gas would enable the CO2 to be sequestered. If the vehicle itself burned the natural gas that would require recapturing the CO2 from the atmosphere itself, which is much more challenging.

None of this is to detract from the attractiveness of battery vehicles.

2muchcoffeeman• 5 months ago

How do you solve aeronautical and maritime applications?

mono442• 5 months ago

It's possible to create hydrogen from coal and carbon capture is supposed to be feasible. Though I don't know how commercially viable this is.

peterfirefly2• 5 months ago

Carbon doesn't really contain all that much hydrogen.

Feasibility is key.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSV2kVkO1w

Rohansi• 5 months ago

Creating hydrogen isn't the only problem. Storage and transportation is a big one since it is an actual gas instead of a liquid. Needs to be compressed, causes embrittlement, highly flammable, etc...

helterskelter2• 5 months ago

I've seen exactly one of these in person while in San Diego for a month or so. I never did see a fueling station for it though.

kotaKat2• 5 months ago

There's only... well, 51 of them. If you're lucky, you're near one of the 42 that are actually online and available for fueling (as of this comment).

Stations running out of fuel and stations going offline for hardware failures runs rampant.

Oh, and some stations might not be able to provide the highest pressure H2, so you might be stuck taking an 85% tank fill... and at nearly $30/kg and a 5.6kg (full) tank, that's an expensive fill.

https://h2-ca.com/

peterfirefly2• 5 months ago

And they are not even supposed to explode anymore!

themafia• 5 months ago

In the US. How does their value fare in Japan?

decimalenough2• 5 months ago

Given the complete collapse in sales last year (-83% to 432 units, in a market of over 4M cars sold), I'd venture to guess they're faring pretty badly.

https://www.automotiveworld.com/news/fcev-sales-in-japan-fal...

numpad03• 5 months ago

https://www.carsensor.net/usedcar/bTO/s235/index.html

wlesieutre• 5 months ago

It’s not really fair to compare depreciation against MSRP when they were being sold new at massive discounts. You could’ve gotten one of these for $40,000 off.

https://www.carscoops.com/2024/02/toyota-offers-crazy-40k-di...

appcustodian2• 5 months ago

It's extremely fair to compare depreciation against MSRP. What's not fair is to say that they were being "sold new at massive discounts" when in reality it's an asterisk-ridden rebate process that applied to one model year under specific circumstances. That article was spam when it was written, can you provide a first party source for these massive discounts?

Aurornis2• 5 months ago

Depreciation is measured against the price someone actually paid.

The MSRP doesn’t matter. The S stands for suggested.

stetrain2• 5 months ago

This is a source of a lot of similar press around EV depreciation. They compare the MSRP of an EV 3 years ago with the current used market price, ignoring that the actual price paid is often significantly less due a combination of discounts, tax credits, and rebates.

cosmic_cheese2• 5 months ago

The part that's interesting to me is how much the depreciation is posed as negative rather than positive.

The long term value of a car is only really relevant if one is constantly cycling through cars and needs the trade-in/resale value. If a car isn't viewed as an investment and/or the intention is to drive it into the ground, depreciation is purely positive because it means that there's insanely good deals on some great cars right now. Of course everybody's needs are different, but for a lot of people there's nothing that comes remotely close of the value of a gently driven, practically new 1-3 year old lease return EV.

loeg2• 5 months ago

My state assesses annual car taxes based on MSRP rather than real market value, unfortunately, so these fake MSRPs matter to me. :-(

jillesvangurp2• 5 months ago

EV depreciation is a very different beast. Basically, EVs are still being sold at a higher price point than their actual cost justifies in some markets. Part of that is manufacturers being a bit behind on their cost cutting and part of that is just because the market is incentivizing selling vehicles at inflated prices.

If you strip that away, you get to more reasonable price points already getting common all over Asia, Australia, and even the EU market right now. There you might find reasonably priced new vehicles at around 25K euros or even below 20K. A few years ago, those vehicles didn't exist and ASPs were closer to 40-50K for a cheap one. So, the second hand value of those older vehicles has indeed depreciated enormously. Because they simply are not worth as much relative to the much cheaper newer generation of cars. These vehicles got obsoleted by a better and cheaper generation of cars.

With hydrogen cars, companies sell them at a loss. They always have. That's why Toyota, the biggest proponent, sells more EVs than they ever built hydrogen cars. Pretty much every quarter now.

The better/cheaper generation of hydrogen cars never materialized. And it probably never will. The hydrogen distribution network never happened either. Because as it turns out, making hydrogen is really expensive. So aside from a few heavily subsidized filling stations, the economics for those is so terrible that they tend to shut down as soon as the subsidies run out. So, that's why they are relatively worthless as a second hand car. You are better off buying a second hand EV. And since those have depreciated a lot, hydrogen cars simply aren't worth more second hand.

And since there is no realistic prospect of ever producing hydrogen cars or hydrogen at price points that can match those of EVs and electricity, hydrogen based transport is at this point dead as a door nail.

LTL_FTC2• 5 months ago

Toyota restricted the sale of its hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to specific, qualified customers who lived or worked near existing, functional hydrogen refueling stations. I remember looking into them when first released but realized I wasn’t eligible and the fact that Toyota restricted the sale meant there was a huge risk in buying them.

With all the recent outrage and lawsuits, I wonder how many buyers actually did their due diligence and weighed the risk before committing to them? Or maybe the huge fuel subsidy was seen as a win even if this event played out? Idk but I commend Toyota for taking the risk and going for it.

Edit: typo

decimalenough2• 5 months ago

Approximately zero regular consumers purchased hydrogen cars. They were all fleet purchases designed primarily to publish burnish eco-friendly credentials, like this:

"This new initiative reinforces Air Liquide's commitment to decarbonizing transportation and accelerating the shift toward sustainable and low-carbon mobility solutions."

https://www.airliquide.com/group/press-releases-news/2025-11...

Of course, Air Liquide would also profit massively from building hydrogen infra if it did become commonplace.

kotaKat2• 5 months ago

Funny thing, Air Liquide. They were going to build a massive green hydrogen plant in upstate NY and backed out when the tax credits disappeared...

https://www.airproducts.com/company/news-center/2025/02/0224...

LTL_FTC2• 5 months ago

Well… I did/do see many around the Bay Area. Especially during the morning commute. But I agree, overall it was a low volume car.

BadBadJellyBean15• 5 months ago

I don't think hydrogen will ever be a thing for personal cars. Apart from the abysmal "well to wheel" efficiency it's also just such a hassle to create a fuel network for it. Gasoline is bad enough but a gas that will just leak away whatever you do seems like a stretch. It is just so much simpler with electricity. Pretty much every gas station already has it. No driving it around with trucks. Just maybe once install a bigger cable or a battery/capacitor.

bombcar2• 5 months ago

My understanding is most hydrogen fueling stations produce the hydrogen onsite via electrolysis of water.

EDIT: My understanding was wrong - it's produced locally onsite but via steam-methane reforming: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-na...

hvb2• 5 months ago

If you can do that at a meaningful rate you might as well install ev charging and just not electrolyse when cars are charging

blibble2• 5 months ago

this is the case while they're in the hype building phase, when people are paying attention

if hydrogen even gained widespread adoption, it would be mass produced via steam reforming of natural gas

(which is why the oil majors are the ones desperately pushing it)

BadBadJellyBean15• 5 months ago

Okay not driving it around then. But somehow it's worse. You still have to build the special tank and the special pump and also get an electrolysis device that is big enough to create enough hydrogen and also you have to get heaps of power somewhere that could instead be just straight put into a battery in a car. Make it make sense. What's the point? Who is willing to do that?

hannob• 5 months ago

Your understanding is entirely wrong.

Most hydrogen fueling stations receive it from the next steam reformer, which will make it from fossil gas.

deadbabe• 5 months ago

Isn’t this bad? This means H2O molecules are being destroyed and the water is not returning to the water cycle to be reused. We will literally run out of water if everyone did this.

aunty_helen10• 5 months ago

That’s not a thing. Anyone who’s seen hydrogen being split from electrolysis knows it takes a lot lot lot of electricity and is very slow. If two people needed to fill up in the same day it would run the well dry.

jasonwatkinspdx• 5 months ago

Completely wrong.

Globally over 95% of hydrogen is sourced from fossil fuels, particularly natural gas wells. Electrolysis is very limited to niche applications or token projects.

buckle80172• 5 months ago

Pretty much every gas station already has [electricity].

Sure but they don't have electric vehicle recharging electricity.

They have run the pumps and power the lights electricity.

BadBadJellyBean15• 5 months ago

Still seems like a smaller investment to get a bigger cable than H2 infrastructure (Tanks, Pumps, maybe even electrolysis system).

MBCook2• 5 months ago

True, but they already exist.

Hydrogen stations don’t. If you have to build new ones, especially if you have to supply them with enough power to create their own hydrogen for water, what’s the difference from just building EV chargers?

And if you’re going to add hydrogen to existing gasoline stations then same question.

If hydrogen was somehow able to use existing gasoline infrastructure it would make a lot more sense. But it’s not.

helterskelter2• 5 months ago

I always figured it would make more sense for hydrogen to be an option for renewable infra if the problems with leaking and embrittlement could be solved. Currently, moving renewable power over very long distances and storing it at scale is a non-trivial issue which hydrogen could help solve.

This way, for example, Alaska in the winter could conceivably get solar power from panels in Arizona.

pfdietz11• 5 months ago

Storage is the bigger problem, specifically very long duration or rarely used storage (to cover Dunkelflauten, for example) for which batteries are poorly suited. Hydrogen (or more generally e-fuels) is one way to do that, but another very attractive one is very low capex thermal storage. Personally, I feel the latter would beat hydrogen: the round trip efficiency is similar or better, the complexity is very low, power-related capex should be lower, and there's no need for possibly locally unavailable geology (salt formations) for hydrogen storage.

With this sort of storage, Alaska in winter gets its energy from Alaska in summer.

BadBadJellyBean15• 5 months ago

Only if we had a true oversupply of green energy. Converting electricity to H2 and then back is so incredible inefficient. It's less work to just create better electrical transmission systems. China did that with their high voltage DC lines.

fsh3• 5 months ago

These problems are grossly exaggerated in popular discussions. Hydrogen has been routinely transported and stored in standard steel cylinders for over a century. Most cities originally used coal gas (50% hydrogen by volume) for heating and illumination before switching to natural gas after World War II. What kills the idea is the abysmal efficiency of electrolysis and hydrogen fuel cells. Standard high-voltage DC power lines would be much better suited for getting solar power from Arizona to Alaska.

stetrain2• 5 months ago

Moving renewable power is easy, we have a grid for that. Infrastructure for movement of electricity is ubiquitous in places that have never seen a hydrogen pump.

If the grid is insufficient in a particular place or corridor, investing in upgrading it will provide a better long term solution than converting electricity to hydrogen, driving that hydrogen around on roads, and converting it back into electricity.

Storage is a bigger issue for sure.

mappu• 5 months ago

Gaseous form is a problem, but have you seen the Fraunhofer POWERPASTE? I was optimistic when the news was first announced, but that was a decade ago and of course it's not widely used.

XorNot3• 5 months ago

At that point you're just building a weird battery storage system again though.

cbmuser2• 5 months ago

It is just so much simpler with electricity.

Yet the market still thinks differently. Lots of countries still keep subsidizing EV despite them already being mature technology for such a long time.

We didn't have to subsidize the smart phone to make it successful, we shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars either.

pjerem• 5 months ago

Maybe if we had smartphones that emitted greenhouse and toxic gases by using a mini ICE engine that were so cheap nobody would buy anything else, we would subsidize the electric ones. We may even ban the gas phones.

kibibu• 5 months ago

We also wouldn't need to if environmental externalities were costed into petroleum prices.

jiggawatts2• 5 months ago

we shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars either.

Smart phones were subsidised, just less obviously. Much of the fundamental research into the radio systems was done by government labs, for example.

Not to mention that governments provide maaaaasssive subsidies to the entire fossil fuel industry, including multi-trillion dollar wars in the middle east to control the oil!

Look at it from the perspective of pollution control in cities. China just invested tens of billions - maybe hundreds — into clearing out the smog they were notorious for. Electric vehicles are a part of the solution.

The alternative is everyone living a decade less because… the market forces will it.

DangitBobby• 5 months ago

ICE love is cultural, and there's a bunch of FUD from entrenched interests.

BadBadJellyBean15• 5 months ago

I am not comparing BEV with ICE. That would be stupid. ICE is not and will never be a solution to the fact that we are burning oil and destroying the environment. But EV has to compete with ICE and many people don't like the fact that they might be a small inconvenience. The environment is just not part of the calculation so to make BEVs even slightly competitive the price has to be lowered.

H2 doesn't compete with ICE. It competes with BEV. That and in that comparison I do think it is much simpler. I'd be open to be enlightened why the killer feature of H2 is that makes it even worth considering with all these downsides.

Tuna-Fish• 5 months ago

And more to the point, if you want to use synthetic fuels, why on earth would you pick hydrogen?

Yes, it burns to clean water, but if the carbon feedstock is renewable, synthetic hydrocarbons are renewable too. The efficiency loss from doing the additional steps to build hydrocarbons is not large compared to the efficiency losses of using hydrogen, and storage can be so much easier with something denser.

BadBadJellyBean15• 5 months ago

I'd assume because it is complicated. Capturing enough carbon, splitting it, generating enough H2, combining it with the carbon to make long enough chains. That all sounds complicated and expensive and probably needs even more surplus green power that we don't have. It also doesn't solve the problem of local pollution when burning carbon based fuels.

haunter• 5 months ago

Beautiful car but for example I live in Hungary and there is a grand total of one charging station in the whole coutry in Budapest. Yes it's free to charge but probably only makes sense to get a Mirai if you are a Bolt or Uber driver. Nice tech demo though.

Here is the european charging station map https://h2.live/en/ Benelux countries, Switzerland, and the Ruhr area are most likely the best places to own this car

joecool1029• 5 months ago

Why was it made? I ask because GM’s EV-1 was discussed earlier and it basically existed due to California’s zero-emission requirement in the 90’s. Is this just Toyota doing some random R&D while fulfilling a state minimum requirement?

testing22321• 5 months ago

To trick people into thinking hydrogen cars are the future so they don’t buy an EV now.

I’ve driven my own vehicles through 65 countries on 5 continents, and even the most remote villages in Africa and South America had electricity of some form.

I’ve never seen a hydrogen filling station in my life. The idea we can build out that infrastructure faster than bolster the electric grid is laughably stupid. Downright deceptive.

avidiax• 5 months ago

I think there's some truth to this. Toyota desperately needs the future to play to their strengths, something more complicated than EVs, which I think is behind their obsession with hybrids.

Not sure that a fuel cell vehicle isn't just an EV with extra steps, however.

numpad03• 5 months ago

I think that + it's an EV that Toyota don't have to source the battery cells. FCEVs are full EVs just like Tesla, that uses a different kind of battery than Li-ion.

beAbU3• 5 months ago

The latest model comes with a li-ion battery pack. Previous model had Nimh cells I think.

SilverElfin• 5 months ago

I still feel hydrogen fuel cells are the better choice. The convenience of refilling quickly is great. Maybe that’ll matter less if PHEVs are allowed to exist but with some places banning gas cars entirely, I don’t have hope.

elsonrodriguez• 5 months ago

The inefficiency of creating, transporting, and converting hydrogen into motion is way too much to bear for the purpose of eliminating a 45 minute charging stop.

audunw• 5 months ago

The convenience of filling is only there if you have the fuel stations. Considering how expensive it is I’d argue that it’s far better to spend that money on EV charging infrastructure, you get a lot more bang for gour buck. And EVs are arguable significantly more convenient when you have the infrastructure. Would you buy a phone that lasted a week or two, but you had to go to a phone filling station to refill it?

And yes, EVs can be more convenient also for street parking. It’s just an infrastructure problem and by now there are dozens of different solutions for every parking situation imaginable.

It’s frankly absurd reading debates about this online from Norway. It’s over. Yeah Norway has money and cheap electricity, that’s what makes it possible to “speed run” the technology transition. But other than that it’s a worst case scenario for EVs. Lots of people with only street parking in Oslo. Winter that’s brutal on range. People who love to drive hours and hours to their cabin every weekend. With skis on the roof. Part of schengen so people drive all the way down to croatia in summer. We gave EVs and Hydrogen cars the same chance. Same benefits. EVs won. End of story. Though a hydrogen station near me blew up in a spectacularly loud explosion so maybe that makes me a bit biased.

SideburnsOfDoom3• 5 months ago

The convenience of refilling quickly is great.

Is it more convenient than plugging in an EV overnight at home, and having a full "tank" every morning?

It is not.

Electricity supply is everywhere. More so than Gasoline supply, and far far more so than hydrogen supply.

vel0city10• 5 months ago

I'll take the convenience of being able to charge my car every night compared to having to drive out of my way to go to the extremely rare hydrogen fuel station.

I spend more of my time pumping gas in my ICE car than I do waiting on my EV to charge. Quite a bit more time despite having a similar-ish mileage.

constantcrying3• 5 months ago

When comparing EVs to hydrogen cars it is very obvious that one is the superior solution.

An EV is a clear simplification of an ICE. Add a Battery and replace the mechanical complexity of a combustion engine with a relatively simple electric motor. So many components are now unnecessary and so many problems just go away. EVs also make charging simpler.

Hydrogen cars on the other hand are very complex and also quite inefficient, requiring many steps to go from hydrogen generation to motor movement. And they require a very sophisticated network of charging infrastructure, which has to deal with an explosive gas at high pressures. Something which is dangerous even in highly controlled industrial environments.

I just do not see a single reason why hydrogen cars would catch on. EVs are good already and come with many benefits.

glitchc2• 5 months ago

An EV is a clear simplification of an ICE. Add a Battery and replace the mechanical complexity of a combustion engine with a relatively simple electric motor. So many components are now unnecessary and so many problems just go away. EVs also make charging simpler.

Is it? Then why isn't it cheaper to produce and cheaper to own?

Hydrogen cars on the other hand are very complex and also quite inefficient, requiring many steps to go from hydrogen generation to motor movement. And they require a very sophisticated network of charging infrastructure, which has to deal with an explosive gas at high pressures. Something which is dangerous even in highly controlled industrial environments.

It's a standard combustion engine, nothing special.

mjamesaustin• 5 months ago

EVs are cheaper to own – the fuel savings are enormous.

EVs aren't cheaper to produce yet, but battery costs are still falling and they will reach parity with ICE vehicles soon.

vel0city10• 5 months ago

My EV has cost me ~$1,100/yr less to operate over the last few years for the same mileage compared to my ICE, and I didn't even have any major issues with my ICE. Meanwhile its been charged with almost exclusively 100% renewable, zero-emission energy.

MindSpunk• 5 months ago

You're both wrong, the Mirai uses a fuel cell as the voltage source for an otherwise EV drive train. The Mirai is an EV with a fuel cell instead of a battery.

There is no ICE in a Mirai.

constantcrying3• 5 months ago

Is it? Then why isn't it cheaper to produce and cheaper to own?

Because batteries are very expensive. But they aren't particularly complex.

This argument just does not make any sense at all. Of course simple components can be more expensive. The cost of ownership is even less relevant, since it depends almost entirely on outside factors, which vary by region and government.

It's a standard combustion engine, nothing special.

This is totally false. The hydrogen storage alone is enormously complicated. Hydrogen, especially at the pressures needed for a car to be viable is far more complex to store safely then fuel storage for a regular diesel/gasoline car.

Pretending this is not the case is just delusional.

aunty_helen10• 5 months ago

Kinda glad this is the case. When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished.

Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground. There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the next oil and therefore greedy people want to get in early on. But this blinds them to the basic chemistry and physics.

marcosdumay2• 5 months ago

There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the next oil

There's a very well financed propaganda campaign.

pjc504• 5 months ago

Yes, it's not the new oil, it's the same oil in "green" packaging. Plus some comforting lies about carbon capture.

KennyBlanken2• 5 months ago

Same with nuclear. The most expensive form of electricity generation there is. No grid operator wants to touch it, but the nuclear industry has been very busy lobbying congress and both the current and last administration.

ForHackernews• 5 months ago

Why is it such a terrible idea? In theory you can generate it via electrolysis in places with plentiful renewable energy, and then you've got a very high-density, lightweight fuel. On the surface, it seems ideal for things like cars or planes where vehicle weight matters. Batteries are huge and heavy and nowhere near as energy dense as gasoline.

CamperBob22• 5 months ago

Besides being expensive to generate unless you already happen to have an electrolysis plant handy, hydrogen is awkward and hazardous to store. Once generated, it costs yet more energy to liquefy, and then it seeps right through many common metals, weakening them in the process. It's just not a good consumer-level energy source, and nobody could figure out why Toyota couldn't see that.

Interestingly, liquid hydrogen is nowhere near the most energy-dense way to store and transport it. I don't recall the exact numbers but absorption in a rare-earth metal matrix is said to be much better on a volumetric basis. [1] Still not exactly cheap or convenient, but it mitigates at least some of the drawbacks with liquid H2.

1: https://www.fuelcellstore.com/blog-section/what-hydrogen-sto...

stephen_g• 5 months ago

It’s horrible to work with - dangerous, embrittlement issues etc., and very energy intensive to compress into very heavy cryogenic storage containers…

Rygian2• 5 months ago

Check out the "Clean Hydrogen Ladder" document.

Hydrogen wastes a large amount of energy.

SideburnsOfDoom3• 5 months ago

Hydrogen is the minimum viable atom: one proton, one electron. H2 is a tiny molecule. "hydrogen embrittlement" is when it's small enough to diffuse into solid metal, because it's that much smaller than iron atoms.

It's hard to work with because of this, and what's the point? For most uses, electricity supply is already everywhere.

L-four• 5 months ago

The cheapest way to make hydrogen is to use fossil fuels.

loeg2• 5 months ago

It's hell to store. The energy density is terrible and as a tiny molecule it escapes most seals. When it transitions from a liquid to a gas, it expands manyfold (i.e., explodes).

ssl-33• 5 months ago

Ignoring some of the other issues:

Imagine we have this electrolysis plant, splitting up water to produce the hydrogen we need for an area. That's fine.

But it needs fed electricity to keep the process going. Lots of it. It needs more electrical power to split the water than combining it again produces.

So it starts off being energy-negative, and it takes serious electricity to make it happen. Our grid isn't necessarily ready for that.

And then we need to transport the hydrogen. Probably with things like trucks and trains at first (but maybe pipelines eventually). This makes it even more energy-negative, and adds having great volumes of this potentially-explosive gas in our immediate vicinity some of the time whether we're using it individually or not.

Or: We can just plug in our battery-cars at home, and skip all that fuel transportation business altogether.

It's still energy-negative, and the grid might not be ready for everyone to do that either.

But at least we don't need to to implement an entirely new kind of scale for hydrogen production and distribution before it can be used.

So that's kind of the way we've been going: We plug out cars into the existing grid and charge them using the same electricity that could instead have been used to produce hydrogen.

(It'd be nice if battery recycling were more common, but it turns out that they have far longer useful lives than anyone reasonably anticipated and it just isn't a huge problem...yet. And that's not a huge concern, really: We already have a profitable and profoundly vast automotive recycling industry. We'll be sourcing lithium from automotive salvage yards as soon as it is profitable to do so.)

nkoren• 5 months ago

Zubrin's "Hydrogen Hoax" from 2007[1] is basically an ironclad critique. The physics are inescapably poor, and always will be. (Zubrin makes other points in that article which should probably be taken with more salt, but his critique of hydrogen stands).

1: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoa...

fuzzfactor15• 5 months ago

you've got a very high-density, lightweight fuel.

Correction, a very low density, lightweight fuel.

Burns clean though with no carbon in the exhaust.

But the upstream carbon emissions have not come close to zero when you look at total hydrogen use in the real world so far.

dehrmann3• 5 months ago

Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground.

It's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its head around not making engines. Ironically, the place hydrogen might work is airplanes where the energy density of batteries doesn't work.

breve7• 5 months ago

It's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its head around not making engines.

Of course they can. Toyota sells BEVs. As time goes on BEVs will become a greater percentage of their sales.

satvikpendem• 5 months ago

What does this mean? They have electric vehicles too.

qingcharles• 5 months ago

The energy density doesn't work for now. Everybody hoping for that breakthrough, and battery aircraft are moving into certain sectors (drone delivery, air taxis etc).

nandomrumber8• 5 months ago

Has the hydrogen storage problem been solved yet?

Last time I checked it needs to be stored in cryo / pressure vessel and it also leaks through steel and ruins its structural properties in the process.

Plasmoid• 5 months ago

We're actually not that far off.

Right now, liquid fuels have about 10x the energy density of batteries. Which absolutely kills it for anything outside of extreme short hop flights. But electric engines are about 3x more efficient than liquid fuel engines. So now we're only 3x-4x of a direct replacement.

That means we are not hugely far off. Boeing's next major plane won't run on batteries, but the one afterwards definitely will.

beAbU3• 5 months ago

The Mirai is a fuel cell EV. There is no engine. Not sure what your point is regarding engines?

WalterBright15• 5 months ago

the place hydrogen might work is airplanes where the energy density of batteries doesn't work.

How is that going to work? Cryogenic liquid hydrogen? High pressure tanks? Those don't seem practical for an airplane.

What does work for airplanes is to use carbon atoms that hydrogen atoms can attach to. Then, it becomes a liquid that can easily be stored at room temperature in lightweight tanks. Very high energy density, and energy per weight!

(I think it's called kerosene.)

dev1ycan• 5 months ago

They are just too much in bed with big oil to want to switch, instead they spend rnd on hydrogen in order to mess up with renewables on purpose.

Braxton19805• 5 months ago

It might also be because the Japanese government works very hard to have full employment and EVs require less labor.

hogehoge512• 5 months ago

WTF , you are commenting about FCEV - these things dont have engines!

The strategy clearly stated by Akio Toyoda is multiple power train technology. You can listen to his interviews on the subject, some are in Japanese, but as you have stated a clear and unambiguous interpretation of Toyota's policy I will assume you have that fluency.

(Automotive OEMs are assemblers, the parts come from the supply chain starting with Tier 1 suppliers. In that sense TMC does not do "making engines", but possibly the nuance and consequences here of whether not it "wraps it's head" to "makes things", vs if it has the capability to specify, manufacture distribute something at scale with a globally localized supply chain AND adjust to consumer demand/resource availability changes 5 years after the design start - in this context i ask you, can you "wrap your head" around the latest models that are coming out in every power train technology fcev, (p)hev to bev)

api• 5 months ago

Biofuel makes more sense for airplanes. No conversion even necessary. You could fuel up a 737 with properly formulated biofuel and fly it now, though a lot of validation would be needed to be generally allowed especially for passenger flights.

If we want easier to produce biofuels then LNG aviation makes sense. We are flying LNG rockets already. You could go ahead and design LNG planes now and they’d emit less carbon even on fossil natural gas. Existing turbofan jet engines could be retrofitted to burn methane.

Biogas is incredibly easy to make to the point that there are pretty easy designs online for off grid biogas digesters you can use to run a generator. You can literally just turn a barrel upside down in a slightly larger barrel full of water, shit, and food waste, attach a hose to it, and as the inner barrel floats up it fills with biogas under mild pressure that you can plug right into things. May need to dry it for some applications since it might contain some water vapor but that’s not hard.

Industrial scale biogas is basically the same principle. Just large scale, usually using sewage and farm waste.

LNG rockets also mean “green” space launch is entirely possible.

vkou• 5 months ago

It's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its head around not making engines.

Which is also the reason why its plug-in hybrids are so reliable, despite being dramatically more complex than either an EV or an ICE.

Toyota is very good at making engines, and it would be insane to throw away all that expertise to deliver a half-assed new product.

nandomrumber8• 5 months ago

There is a great way to store, transport, and use hydrogen:

Bind it to various length carbon chains.

When burned as an energy source the two main byproducts are carbon dioxide which is an essential plant growth nutrient, and water which is also essential to plant growth.

Environmentalists will love it!

And they can prise my turbo diesel engines from my cold dead hands.

mapontosevenths6• 5 months ago

Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which makes the world warmer on average. It also lowers the PH levels of the oceans.

If the oceans die, its very likely that many or even most humans will also. As a human I am pretty strongly opposed to dying, but thats just, like, my opinion man.

ViewTrick1002• 5 months ago

The problem is all the effort = energy you need to spend collecting carbon atoms.

_fizz_buzz_• 5 months ago

We live (or at least used live) in a very nice climate equilibrium with the CO2 level we had. Pushing us into another climate equilibrium looks very dangerous for human civilization. However I concede that it might be advantageous for certain plants, but I am not a plant so I am mostly concerned about human civilization.

foota4• 5 months ago

Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground.

See: the Hindenburg disaster

afternote: There's the potential for an amazing pun in here, but I don't think I quite did the opportunity justice.

AngryData3• 5 months ago

Ehh, the Hindenburg had a flammable skin. Barrage balloons from the World Wars were most often filled with hydrogen and yet were extremely difficult to ignite or take down even with purpose build incindiary ammo for that purpose shows hydrogen balloons can be safe. Often they would be riddled with dozens of holes but still take many hours for them to lose enough hydrogen to float back down to the ground.

The only real downsides are slow travel speed and vulnerability to extreme storms since there arent many places to put it with a large enough hanger even with days of warning beforehand.

beAbU3• 5 months ago

Pointing to the Hindenburg as an example of why hydrogen is a bad idea is the same as pointing to Chernobyl as an example of why nuclear is a bad idea.

wait...

belorn2• 5 months ago

People looked at how the cost of wind and solar went down and made a assumption that green hydrogen would follow. The reasoning was that the cost of green hydrogen was energy, and thus at some point green hydrogen would be too cheap to meter.

The whole energy plan of central/northen Europe, especially Germany, was built for the last several decades on the idea that they would combine wind, solar and cheap natural gas and then replace the natural gas part with green hydrogen. In Sweden there were even several municipalities that spear headed this by switching mass transportation and heating towards hydrogen, initially with hydrogen produced through natural gas, as a way to get ahead on this plan.

The more sensible project were the green steel project. As experts in green hydrogen said consistently said through those decades, is that green steel would be the real test to make green hydrogen economical. The economics of burning it for energy or transportation would come several decades later, if ever. The green steel project however has not ended up as planned and gotten severely delayed and has seen a cost increase by an estimated 10x. municipalities are now giving up the hydrogen infrastructure and giving it an early retirement, as maintenance costs was significantly underestimated. There is very little talk now about replacing natural gas with green hydrogen, and the new plan is instead to replace the natural gas with bio fuels, hinted at carbon capture, at some unspecified time.

aunty_helen10• 5 months ago

Good context. It's a shame none of these people did high school chemistry.

I do remember there being some news about the steel manf.

I wonder if further advancements in rocketry are adding H2 tech that could help us manage the difficulties of dealing with the stuff. It still only makes sense in very specific circumstances. Like when you need energy in tank form.

But I think battery / biofuel is the future.

throwaway4738254• 5 months ago

Sweden has very little natural gas in its energy mix:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

I highly doubt that hydrogen heating was ever considered. It's usually pushed by the gas lobby (since most hydrogen comes from gas), and Sweden doesn't have a strong gas lobby.

jacquesm2• 5 months ago

That was extremely stupid of them then. Hydrogen has been very good at one thing: subsidy extraction. But I don't think it was or ever will be a viable fuel for planetary transportation.

scraptor• 5 months ago

The idea was to transition from coal to natural gas while using solar and wind to reduce fuel consumption, thereby significantly reducing CO2 emissions. Any claims of hydrogen being burned were either lies to the public to get the gas plants built despite the non-green optics or lies to investors as part of a fraud scheme.

dotancohen3• 5 months ago

I had to Google what is green hydrogen. It is hydrogen produced by electrolysis.

If you've already got the electricity for electrolysis, would it not be more efficient and mechanically simpler to store it in a battery and power an electric motor?

ACCount375• 5 months ago

Agreed on "green steel".

In general, "green hydrogen" makes the most sense if used as a chemical feedstock that replace natural gas in industrial processes - not to replace fossil fuels or be burned for heat.

On paper, hydrogen has good energy density, but taking advantage of that in truth is notoriously hard. And for things that demand energy dense fuels, there are many less finicky alternatives.

panick214• 5 months ago

, and thus at some point green hydrogen would be too cheap to meter.

Even if you assume that is true. It will always be more expensive then straight electricity.

The more sensible project were the green steel project.

Not sure I agree. I think Boston Metal solution is better long term carbon free steel solution.

natural gas with bio fuels

There was a huge 'bio' fuels hype around like 15-20 years ago if I remember correctly. Huge amount of controversy and false claims with politicians support.

Funny how this now comes back again and nothing was learned.

dmix2• 5 months ago

When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished.

Sounds like it was mostly just people reacting to government incentives. Subsidized markets acting irrational.

aunty_helen10• 5 months ago

Politicians are conduits. Someone wanted this to happen.

But yea, subsidies. I've been on many a call where "there's govt funding available if we shape this like x" is one of the major selling points.

HPsquared• 5 months ago

Synthetic fuels (including hydrogen) do still make a lot of sense for heavy stuff like trucks, buses or trains, and aircraft where the energy density is a big plus. Those are where you'd expect to see hydrogen take off first, not passenger cars. Same as how diesel started in trucks - expensive engines but economical when amortized and worth it for heavy usage applications.

If they couldn't crack those areas, no chance in the highly competitive passenger car space.

aunty_helen10• 5 months ago

Trucks and busses would be better off with battery swaps at depo like electric forklifts do. More mileage more towing weight for trucks, just stack more batteries. Overweight? Use a diesel.

Trains is an easy one, over head lines.

Aircraft, I think short distance trips <1hr maybe otherwise biofuel. Likely we’ll see biofuels widely used by 2040. Electric motors on a 777, I’m not sure.

masklinn2• 5 months ago

Synthetic fuels (including hydrogen) do still make a lot of sense for heavy stuff like trucks, buses or trains

Synthetic fuels don't "make a lot of sense" for "heavy stuff", rail electrification has been the norm everywhere the capital costs were justified (it's at about 30% worldwide, 57% in europe, some countries like Switzerland are nearly 100% electric).

Synthetic fuels make sense for autonomy reasons when you can't tether the "heavy stuff", but fuel engines absolutely suck for heavy work loads, electric transmissions started being a thing before railway electrification even was.

And of course those are situations where hydrogen sucks, fuel is useful there because it's a stable and dense form of energy storage which is reasonably easy to move about without infrastructure, you can bring a bunch of barrels on a trailer, or tank trailers, to an off-grid site and fuel all your stuff (including electric generators). With hydrogen you're now wasting a significant portion of the energy you brought in trying to keep the hydrogen from going wild.

panick214• 5 months ago

trucks, buses or trains

Trains no, electrify everywhere is clearly better. Maybe for really old legacy branch lines, batteries.

Trucks should as much as possible move to rail, much better solution.

For the rest, the waste majority of short-haul trucking, should be electric. In Europe, the amount of stopping trucks have to do already can be used to charge.

Only ultra long haul trucking has to stay on traditional fuels, and that a small %. And then you might as well just use conventional fuels.

Some aircraft is the only really good application. But I think not hydrogen, and instead syn-jet fuel.

crote8• 5 months ago

Reality already caught up with synthetic fuel for buses.

Shenzhen electrified its entire 16,000-vehicle bus fleet in 2017 - that's almost a decade ago. Since then virtually all of China has transitioned to electric, and other countries aren't far behind. Electric buses have completely taken over the market.

And it isn't just rich Western countries playing around either. We're seeing countries like Slovenia and Romania at >90% electric, and even countries like Ecuador and Colombia and targeting 100% electric in 2030 and 2035!

All the hard technical and financial problems have been solved. If your city isn't adopting electric buses yet, it will be solely due to political reasons.

jjtheblunt2• 5 months ago

When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished.

This is the most ridiculous assertion i've seen today. You'd shut down science, for example, and innovation in general.

fuzzfactor15• 5 months ago

Really, they shouldn't be punished, they should be rewarded if they can become more sensible.

Positive incentive please :)

That is how EVs got here as soon as they did.

laughing_man• 5 months ago

When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished.

You could say the same about EVs. Most people in the US who bought an EV decided to go back to ICE for their next vehicle.

rswail2• 5 months ago

Green hydrogen makes sense as a way to ship solar power to places that don't have it.

Using it as a car fuel only makes sense as an interim step to full renewable/EVs.

Internal combustion engines, no matter what the fuel, are way more complicated than electric motors. Doesn't matter how you slice and dice the argument.

Hendrikto• 5 months ago

Also the losses are much higher when converting electricity to hydrogen and then burning that hydrogen.

panick214• 5 months ago

No . No . No. Please No. Absolutely fucking not.

Shipping hydrogen is literally one of the dumbest things you can ever do.

Its pure and utter nonsense that is only getting pushed for political reasons. It has 0 actual viability.

Even if you were willing to pay 5-10x more for hydrogen, shipping doesn't make sense.

The only way we are ever moving any quantity of hydrogen anywhere is with pipelines. Literally everything about hydrogen makes it a complete nightmare to ship.

And nobody is likely ever going to build these hydrogen pipelines.

Hydrogen is completely idiotic as a 'energy move' medium.

Using it as a car fuel only makes sense as an interim step to full renewable/EVs.

No it doesn't and it never did. Only such a tiny amount were ever sold, and those were only sold because of massive subsidies and sold below value by car companies who wanted to push the concept (and farm subsidies).

EV by 2008 already outsold hydrogen vehicles and have grown every year, hydrogen vehicles never became more then marketing gimick and were never sold in numbers that even approach relevance.

thewhitetulip• 5 months ago

With solar/wind oligarchs can't charge you every time you charge your EV at home

Hydrogen was meant to replace Oil so that the oligarchs can keep their oligarchy rather than "pull themselves up by bootstraps"

m4rtink2• 5 months ago

Yeah, it might make sense for some industrial processes as natural gas or coal replacement, but not really anywhere else just because all the tricky leaks and invisible fire hazards.

theshrike79• 5 months ago

Some people legitimately think we can just suck hydrogen out of the air or ground and store it in tanks. (We can, to a limited degree, there's a fancy color attached to that kind of hydrogen).

Then when you attempt to explain that no, that's not how it works, we need to always separate the hydrogen molecules from another substance, which takes energy. A significant amount of energy. So much energy that it's better to shove the same amount of kWh to a battery instead.

The only vaguely useful thing for Green Hydrogen would be renewable overflow storage. When your solar/wind farm is producing too much energy for the grid, you shove it to an electrolysis station that converts water to hydrogen and pressurises it.

Then you pump that into a gigantic fuel cell when the sun is down or it's not windy anymore.

retired2• 5 months ago

Cheapest second generation Mirai I could find is €9950 including VAT. It has scuffs all-round but no major or structural damage. Only 103k km.

This was a €71,000 car four years ago. That is 86% of the value gone. And you were driving around on very expensive hydrogen (compared to diesel and BEV).

vel0city10• 5 months ago

And you were driving around on very expensive hydrogen

That original owner was probably doing all those miles on the free hydrogen given by Toyota.

retired2• 5 months ago

That program was not available in my region

alexose• 5 months ago

I've always been fascinated with these things. Is there any way to make your own H2 to fuel them? I suspect the purity requirements are too high for at-home electrolysis...

empathy_m• 5 months ago

At one point recently the Mirai came with a fuel incentive program: when you buy the car, Toyota gives you a gift card worth $15,000 towards fuel at hydrogen stations.

An interesting second part of the program was that if you live near a hydrogen station but it's broken, Toyota will instead reimburse a rental car and gas for the rental, one week at a time but presumably for as long the hydrogen fuel station remains broken.

kccqzy• 5 months ago

$15,000 worth of fuel card sounds generous until you find that hydrogen stations have jacked up prices to $36/kg.

smcin4• 5 months ago

Full tank capacity of a Mirai is ~5 kg / (120 liters in volume).

stbtrax• 5 months ago

still means nothing, what is the mileage or $/mi there?

newyankee• 5 months ago

I think a few people were expecting the same cost curves that happened with batteries to happen with hydrogen but it seems the challenges are more difficult to overcome. Otherwise I think a Solar PV plant combined with Captive hydrogen production for refuelling on major highways sounds interesting, at least in countries like US, Australia etc. I believe this is not just about PEM or AEM electrolyser or specific tech, it never got the scaling boost.

Ironically the stack comprising fuel cells of different types is possibly very well studied since decades.

For me the Wells to wheel efficiency never made hydrogen worthwhile for short to medium distances and this battle is effectively over.

_aavaa_• 5 months ago

Forget the type of electrolyzer, even if they were free hydrogen would still be expensive. The challenges with hydrogen getting cheaper are thermodynamic and can’t be innovated around. The amount of energy required to electrolyze water simply cannot drop by 10x.

The other difficulties (low energy density, ability to leak through many materials, massive explosion risks, near-invisible flames, etc., etc.) are all inherent to H2 as a molecule.

whatever12• 5 months ago

Not that much worse than an ev.

vel0city10• 5 months ago

Used models for my five year old EV are still selling for ~50% of what I paid for, so no, its far worse than most EVs.

whatever12• 5 months ago

Looking at Ford Mach-E. I don't see the number you are seeing. I can find 2024 Mach-E 50% off its MSRP.

sksasi• 5 months ago

A full tank would cost $200 for about 300-350 mile range.

oceanplexian• 5 months ago

If you think depreciation on a few cars is bad wait until you find out how many hundreds of millions taxpayers spent to build hydrogen stations for cars that don’t exist.

At least it’s not as blatant of a green energy scam as the high speed rail to nowhere. In this case they actually built a few stations that worked.

stevenhubertron• 5 months ago

Cars are not investments.

1970-01-01• 5 months ago

Depends on the car. Some are so special they will have a better ROI than your retirement plan.

https://www.myartbroker.com/investing/articles/top-10-most-i...

dehrmann3• 5 months ago

It's got the EV problem, but 100x worse. No only do you have to worry about where to find a place to refuel, there are far fewer of them, and level 1 charging isn't a fallback. It also doesn't have the EV upsides.

some-guy2• 5 months ago

I lived a block away from a hydrogen fuel station in Oakland, and in the ten years I was there I maybe saw two different Mirais use it.

swifferfan• 5 months ago

Obligatory paper - Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense? (2006)

https://alpha.chem.umb.edu/chemistry/ch471/evans%20files/Pro...

Nothing fundamental has changed in the last 2 decades to refute the arguments Bossel made in 2006.

dizhn• 5 months ago

According to some youtube (doomer) videos I watched a lot of EVs and luxury cars also had this kind of depreciation lately.

GregDavidson• 5 months ago

This technology is completely amazing - for large fleet vehicles like buses, trucks, ferries, etc. Also airplanes! Getting this so compact and refined is a technological miracle. Now put it where it fits!

throwaway4738254• 5 months ago

Buses are already largely electric (with the US as a notable exception), and trucks are quickly getting there:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Meanwhile, hydrogen trucks are nowhere to be found...

dyauspitr• 5 months ago

A huge tank of hydrogen is a bomb. This isn’t like gasoline that takes a lot to ignite.

seltzered_• 5 months ago

Theres something clickbaity and missing from this article, I encourage watching youtubers like 'mirai club' for better info. What i recall from his videos is:

- The Mirai made financial sense AS A LEASE for folks in Southern California back in 2022 (possibly 2023) because:

  - Car prices in general (including EVs) were fairly highly priced at the time due to demand, the chip shortage, etc.

  - There were clean vehicle incentives to get a Toyota Mirai, including things like a hydrogen fuel fill up card to cover expenses.

  - At the time there was some assumptions that hydrogen fuel costs would go down over time, but they actually went up.

Again, I suspect most folks LEASED the Mirai due to it being a very niche car with limited usage outside of california due to the lack of hydrogen fuel stations. Youre now seeing some viral videos on the ultra low cost used Mirai's showing up in states that dont have hydrogen infrastructure due to some odd car dealer auction buys (Transport Evolved has a youtube video on this.)

The article does talk about the lack of investment in hydrogen infrastructure, this is true and theres been a huge split between announced infrastructure investments and what has actually happened (see https://bsky.app/profile/janrosenow.bsky.social/post/3labfzi... for a chart going through 2021-2024). The current US political situation and its impact on clean energy probably doesn't help either.

jjtheblunt2• 5 months ago

The Mirai was _only_ available as a lease, back in the 2018 timeframe anyway, in Southern California.

haneul• 5 months ago

There were also really good financing deals during Covid. Net for me after all costs after resale was $1k for the years I owned the car (the 2nd gen).

But I got in near the bottom and got out before the market for it dumped.

HoldOnAMinute• 5 months ago

The last time I checked local ads, they were giving these cars away free, and you could get a tax deduction. They were paying you to take it.

pazimzadeh• 5 months ago

This article is too long because it's written by a llm

jacquesm2• 5 months ago

You only see Mirais within spitting distance of the one place where they can tank. The network just isn't developed to the point that owning one of these makes any sense at all.

cryptoegorophy• 5 months ago

Sorry. EVs won.

decryption• 5 months ago

I'm surprised it's only 65%. There's hardly anywhere to fuel these things up and the price of hydrogen isn't exactly a bargain.

bitmasher9• 5 months ago

Hydrogen fuel solves a long term strategic problem for Japan, which is why the Mirai got as far as it did.

Japan imports energy. They have to be very careful about which type of energy they build infrastructure for, because they must pay to import that type of energy for decades or centuries. (LNG vs Coal use very different equipment) This is specifically a strategic problem for Japan compared to other energy importers because they both use a lot of energy, and don’t have a military option to secure a foreign supply.

Hydrogen fuel could be created by almost any energy source and then used just like any other fuel source. Ideally Japan would like to pay energy exporters to convert their energy to Hydrogen so Japan has maximum flexibility when importing energy.

Projects like the Mirai exist as proof of concepts for Hydrogen, and the United States was never going to be an early widespread adopter of this technology.

alephnerd• 5 months ago

^^^ This.

But Japan has also been heavily investing in solid state batteries, whose supply chain Idemetsu Kosan and Toyota have begun to productionize [0].

The Japanese government made a decision in the early 2000s to make a dual-pronged bet on Hydrogen and solid-state battery chemistry because they lacked the supply chain and a legal method to access IP for lithium ion batteries.

On the other hand, Samsung and LG got the license for Li-On back during the NMC days, and BYD was able to piggyback on Samsung and Berkshire's IP access when both took growth equity stakes in BYD decades ago.

Another reason that a lot of people overlook is the Hydrogen supply chain overlaps heavily with the supply chain needed to domestically produce nitrogen-fixing fertilizers which is heavily concentrated in a handful of countries (especially Russia with whom Japan has had a border dispute with since the end of WW2) [1].

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/idemitsu-build-pi...

[1] https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/impacts-and-repercussions-pric...

jillesvangurp2• 5 months ago

Japan has a lot of potential for wind and geothermal power. And much of it isn't too bad for solar either.

The madness with hydrogen in Japan is that they produce most of it from imported LNG. If they'd solve domestic clean energy, they'd have no need for hydrogen in transport. EVs are a lot more efficient than hydrogen vehicles. So they'd need a lot less clean energy to power those.

Japan is slowly and belatedly figuring out that physics and economics just won't favor hydrogen, ever. The Mirai is an exercise in futility. It doesn't make any economic sense whatsoever. It never has. Toyota at this point is grudgingly producing more EVs per quarter than it ever produced hydrogen vehicles (in total). They only sell a few hundred per year at this point. The only reason they still make them at all is because they are being subsidized to do that.

killingtime74• 5 months ago

I went to the Toyota museum where they actually have one of these cars as a cross section. I would never drive one. It's like driving around with a massive bomb under the rear seat. Forget thermal runway from batteries, I wonder how big the crater of the explosion from one these would be.

sandworm1015• 5 months ago

Safer than liquid fuel. There are videos out there of what a leak+fire looks like on a hydrogen and gasoline car. You would rather be trapped in the hydrogen car.

https://youtu.be/OA8dNFiVaF0

m463• 5 months ago

It's really simple.

1 Kg of hydrogen is SUPER EXPENSIVE (equivalent ~ 1 gallon of gas)

$17/gallong when I looked at the pumps

When the Mirai first came out, owners didn't care because the fuel was free.

But after that ended, they had to buy it for themselves.

who wants to pay that?

(also, stations weren't plentiful like EV chargers, and even though you could fill up faster than an EV charge, who cares when you can't go very far (distance-wise from home).

ycui1986• 5 months ago

the reality is no where to get the fuel. hydrogen stations are shutting down not building up.

m4rtink2• 5 months ago

It looks like Mirai has no future after all...

I am sorry. ;-)

elzbardico3• 5 months ago

Toyota should have bought a page from pre-brain-damage Elon Musk's book and built a nationwide hydrogen-fueling infra-structure.

Teslas may not be anymore the future of EVs, but we can't deny that by building the Power Charger infrastructure, Tesla gave consumers the confidence to buy an EV knowing that it wouldn't be basically a geofenced vehicle.

unixhero• 5 months ago

Hydrogen gas-stations have blown up in the past https://www.nrk.no/norge/eksplosjon-ved-hydrogenstasjon-1.14...

Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

Related Stories