Toyota rolls out first set of cars to run on hydrogen fuel cells
The electric-car infighting has opened up a huge division over future of zerothe emission cars
Toyota this week officially rolled out what it’s betting will mark “a turning point” in automotive history — a sleek, affordable, eco-friendly “future” car that can drive for 482 kilometres, takes less than five minutes to charge and comes with three years of free fuel.
It’s everything haters of gasguzzling car culture could love. And the biggest name in electric cars hates it.
Toyota’s Mirai (meaning “future” in Japanese) will be one of the first mass-market cars to run on hydrogen fuel cells, which convert compressed hydrogen gas to electricity, leaving water vapour as the only exhaust. As opposed to getting plugged in overnight, the sedan will need only about three minutes to get back to full charge, a huge boon for convincing the world’s drivers to convert to a cleaner ride.
But the green technology has found a surprisingly forceful critic in Elon Musk, the electric-car pioneer and founder of Tesla Motors, maker of batterypowered cars like the Model S. Musk has called hydrogen fuel cells “extremely silly” and “fool cells,” with his main critique being that hydrogen is too difficult to produce, store and turn efficiently to fuel, diverting attention from even better sources of clean energy.
“If you’re going to pick an energy source mechanism, hydrogen is an incredibly dumb one to pick,” Musk said last month in Detroit. “The bestcase hydrogen fuel cell doesn’t win against the current-case batteries. It doesn’t make sense, and that will become apparent in the next few years.”
But Toyota, one of Big Auto’s few pioneers of fuel-efficient cars like the Prius hybrid, has not been content to let Musk’s aggression stand. Bob Carter, a Toyota senior vice president, slapped back at Musk last month by criticising his sole focus on battery-powered cars: “If I was in a position where I had all my eggs in one basket, I would perhaps be making those same comments.”
The electric-car infighting has opened up a huge division over the future of zero-emission cars. Although they make little sense anywhere else now but California, home of the nation’s few hydrogen refuelling stations, Toyota and its home country of Japan are investing heavily into ushering in what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called the world’s “hydrogen era.”
Small-batch operation
The Mirai is an absolute oddity even in the world’s stillsmall green car market. A dozen workers in blue hard hats will handcraft the cars without help of conveyor belts, turning out only three a day, Toyota said. The small-batch operation will roll out 700 this year for the US, Japan, Europe, and crank up to 2,000 starting next year.
Toyota plans to sell the Mirai for about $45,000 in the US, including about $13,000 in federal and California incentives, starting next year. It will sell to the public in Japan next month.
Although Mirai production began in December, Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, marked Tuesday as the official roll-out date. Five years ago to the day, a congressional panel grilled Toyoda about the automaker’s recalls for unintended acceleration programmes, a long embarrassment for the major Japanese brand.
“For us, that date marks a new start,” Toyoda said. “This is not to reflect on the past, but rather to celebrate Toyota’s new start, where we take a fresh step towards the future.”