The hydrogen fuel cell Toyota Mirai is the future (according to its name in Japanese, at least), but how does it fare on British roads today? We drove one from John O’Groats to Land’s End, via the UK’s tiny network of hydrogen stations, to find out





Our Verdict

Toyota Mirai

Toyota claims another first: Europe’s first ‘ownable’ hydrogen car, whether the infrastructure to properly support it is ready for it or not

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The route: 


Surf ’N’ turf hydrogen project: 




Aberdeen hydrogen station: 


How Toyota makes the Mirai: 








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24 June 2018
This is for stress addicts only I'm afraid.
No matter which power source we use for cars, the ingredients are usually a finite resource. OK, you could argue that sir is limitless, but the materials used to create the fuel cell aren't. And you have to wonder, if all the vehicles on planet earth were of this type, what effect on the global ecosystem and temperature dynamics would the mass extraction of Hydrogen from the air have. I know we don't need Hydrogen to breathe, but there must be some knock on effect down the line like there is with all other energy generation.

24 June 2018
Cobnapint wrote:

This is for stress addicts only I'm afraid.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It seems unlikely that we would impact the amount of hydrogen, especially as it is endlessly reusable. Unlike fossil fuels and other chemical compounds, it can't be broken down and used up. It's already the most basic chemical possible.

24 June 2018
Jason is right, Earth isn't going to run low on hydrogen any time soon. It's sustainable, with a few caveats.

The environmental factors are:

- Manufacturing CO2 is higher than a conventional vehicle, roughly on par with a small-batteried BEV as far as I can tell. Bear in mind though, emissions from the manufacturing phase of any car are tiny compared to the use phase of a combustion engine.

- Fuel cell systems use scarce materials such as platinum, although the content of this is reducing as the tech improves.

- There are two common methods for obtaining hydrogen fuel. One is by extracting methane deposits and reforming them with steam. This has a significant CO2 footprint, which results in a Mirai being similar to a Prius. It also requires fuel to be shipped and raw materials to be mined, so retains many problems of our current infrastructure.

The other method, the one relevant to Orkney, is electrolysis. All you need is water and electricity, so it can be done on-site at the filling station. Another plus is that you can have CO2-free hydrogen if renewable electricity is used. *But*, it uses a hell of a lot of electricity, because the process is so inefficient. This means that a fuel cell vehicle uses three times as much electricity as an electric vehicle....

- A big deal is made out of how "the only emission is water" in FCV marketing, but it's probably worth making a study on whether millions of cars expelling water vapour into the air might itself have a climate effect.

25 June 2018

You forgot all the elements in the battery of a Hydrogen car. + the fact you need 4-5 times the amount of electricity to go the same distance that a BEV can do which is why they give fuel away in the USA as the tiny take-up just wouldn't have happened otherwise. 

24 June 2018

Interesting read. There's just one thing I'm a tad confused with

Richard wrote:


That brown trouser ride from John O'Groats to Aberdeen Richard - it's great you managed to make it, but I thought your first task would have been to fill the Hydrogen tank(s) at John O'Groats?

So how did you do it? How did you manage to get the Toyota to John O'Groats in the first place?

24 June 2018
Richard wrote:


There's only one other hydrogen fuel station in Scotland (Fife) - i.e. no stations in any other Scottish city and being rather remote, those cars aren't going to travel far from Aberdeen.

Another Autocar atricle says the Mirai costs £66,000 but Toyota expect most of them to be leased - maintenence package costs £750 a month. Hydrogen may well be half the price of petrol but only an Aberdonian oil Sheikh would be able to afford for what is essentially their town car? I can see the argument for buses and local authority vehicles using hydrogen in Aberdeen but Toyota Mirai's? Which promted me to look up Aberdeen city council's website and surprise surprise, those Mirai's you saw belong to Aberdeen City Council.

If I were an Aberdonian council tax payer, I think I'd be a tad annoyed my money being spent or should I say wasted, in this way. The irony that Aberdeen which made it's money thru the oil industry is now throwing away those profits on hydrogen. I'm sure some tree hugger will counterargue that statement, but before they do so, they may wish to re-read the article on how hydrogen is made and then transported. As a fuel source, it's already dead as a dodo.

24 June 2018
Interested in the part about there being a line of Mirais refuelling in Aberdeen.

I'd heard that a hydrogen filling station can only refuel a certain number of cars per hour before it loses pressure and needs a 'refractory period' - is that not actually the case then?

(Would also take issue with a couple of things in the article. One, having a single motor doesn't explain a lack of regenerative braking - an i3 or new Leaf can regen almost to a stop from a single motor. I assume the real reason is that the Mirai's battery is small and can't take much power, so the result should be the extremely mild regen you get in a Prius.

Second issue is, the article's repeated citing of small, <100-mile EVs as points of comparison. Such cars aren't really sold anymore, the current Leaf will do 140 with ease, but also they were never rivals with the Mirai, which is a large and expensive car. A real rival would be a Tesla, which can match it for range and recharges pretty quickly too, although still some way off 4 minutes for now.)

24 June 2018

 Yes, yes we’re getting there, we have to explore all avenues of providing power for our tiny World and I think Hydrogen has to be one, is important to keep developing, ok, you can argue it take a lot to produce it but it’s cleaner by than others, plus, I think most would prefer the fill at a Pump than plugging in somewhere for 90 minutes as opposed to Hydrogen which like Fossil fuels only takes five minutes,but the real thorn in the Foot is the cost, to have a full on EV or Hydrogen Car isn’t cheap enough yet, not many of us have £25-30,000 to buy one, and there are other polluters, Patio heaters for one, Green House heaters are another, nothing is mentioned or done about them, now if only someone could do Vehicles cheaper..?!

25 June 2018

£25k for a BEV, a HV is valued at £55 (with a grant of £15k would you believe) and costs 6 times more for fuelling than a BEV

24 June 2018

I can't help feeling that Toyota and others are going down a blind alley with hydrogen fuel cell power.


Very surprised the Mirai is incapable of regenerative braking, a major failing methinks.


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