America is a land of opportunity, or so they say in the rest of the world. Perhaps that is why they have decided to give the hydrogen car a second vote of confidence. The problem is that it was intended to be the future of our mobility, but it has turned out to be the opposite. In Europe, it was unsuccessful and ended up spreading pessimism, although now everything could change with this project.
This brand is going to expand the hydrogen car all over America: the goal we thought unattainable
Toyota was boldly the forerunner in this technology by developing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) as an alternative to battery electric vehicles. HFCVs use hydrogen to generate the electric motor’s electric current, causing the only emission of water vapor.
The Japanese carmaker Toyota started building their first production HFCV, the Mirai, two years ago and it has been establishing market share in just a few carefully chosen regions across the world. We deliver with the Mirai here by Toyota acting it a stakeholder in hydrogen as a future transportation fuel in the carbon-neutral universe.
Unlike some of the automakers who are only focused on battery electric vehicles, Toyota pinpoints the strengths of hydrogen fuel cells including high-energy density rate and faster refuelling times. The same time, the growth of hydrogen is concerned with refuelling network and there are few stations built up to the time being.
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Eventually, in 2015, Toyota began to sell Mirai fuel cell electric vehicle in Europe with a belief that the cars would promote the transition from traditional automotive industry to hydrogen mobility.
Since the beginning, Toyota has faced massive hurdles in the European consumer market while getting customers to accept fuel-cell vehicles. The most prominent challenge was the existence of a gravid hydrogen refueling platform at the European level.
One of the reasons why selling large-scale implementation of this technology was made very difficult for Toyota was due to the fact that without H2 stations, consumers found that fuel cell electric vehicles were not practical.
First customers received early model Mirai mostly in hydrogen-connected regions such as Scandinavia, Germany, and the UK where it is possible to refuel the car. However, over European lands great parts of it are without station or have low station density, which does not satisfies the condition for common usage of hydrogen fuel cars.
A slew of European countries had a very poor start with the Mirai. One of the setbacks of the first-generation Ford Pinto was that its sales were dramatically low, with an estimated 1,000 units sold in the European market in those years. Not the promising European sales as there were a few reasons.
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As regards Europe, Toyota believed that hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles could encounter success where the right conditions are applied. The company decided that was the best option and that the US would be the next market where they would make the Mirai available.
A number of things made Toyota believe that the U.S. market has more chances than their doubts. Big push on major H2 investments in California and some states had refuelling infrastructure construction.
That endeavor made Toyota sure that drivers would consider future hydrogen fuelling stations had enough supply of hydrogen gas to promote Mirai owning. California was even more important in this area.
The state drew up a very ambitious plan to switch the transportation sector from combustion engines to zero emission vehicles and set aside funds for the setup of hydrogen stations on the network.
As you can see, the hydrogen car was designed for a market like ours, powerful and willing to completely transform itself to reach net zero. Will this fuel really become popular in America? At the moment, we have neither refuelling stations for this fuel, nor a subsidy plan, as is the case with electric vehicles, so we will have to see.