Toyota, an official sponsor of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games 2024, will deploy a fleet of 500 of its Mirai hydrogen cars as part of the official fleet to ferry athletes and officials between the different sports venues. The Mirai fleet will be refueled with hydrogen from renewable sources provided by French hydrogen specialist Air Liquide.

A fleet of 500 Mirai cars is quite substantial, seen in the light of the declining enthusiasm for fuel-cell hydrogen passenger cars (FCEVs) worldwide. It is ill-striving against the stream of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) that are considered economically the best option today.

Only 0,02% of global passenger fleet

FCEVs accounted for only 0.02% of global passenger vehicle sales last year, a Bloomberg NEV report showed at the beginning of this year. The Toyota Mirai and Hyundai Nexo accounted for most of the 15 391 passenger FCEVs sold last year.

It isn’t easy to find exact figures for FCEV sales worldwide. Toyota is believed to have sold a little over 3 900 Mirai in 2022. However, even in its home country, sales declined as more were exported to South Korea, giving high incentives for hydrogen cars.

According to the Korea Economic Daily, Hyundai’s Nexo sold 10 700 units during January-November 2022, ranking first globally, with Toyota’s Mirai ranking second with 3 238.

Unveiled in 2014

The Mirai was unveiled at the November 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show but never accomplished the ambition to become a mainstream car. As of November 2022, global sales totaled 21 475 units since its introduction, according to figures released by Toyota at that time. The top-selling markets were the US with 11 368 units (California), Japan with 7 435, and the rest of the world with 2 622.

In April, Toyota announced a second FCEV passenger car, the Crown Sedan, to be offered (only in Japan to start) with the Mirai technology in Autumn this year. Toyota said it managed to increase power density by 30%, offering a range of 800 km, a significant improvement compared to the Mirai’s 650 km range.

During the IAA in Munich lately, Toyota’s Hilux hydrogen pickup was revealed at Toyota Manufacturing UK’s vehicle plant in Derby, England. As expected, the technology also comes from the Mirai. Development was done by a consortium with TMC and engineers from its Technical Center in Zaventem near Brussels (Belgium)

The Hilux hydrogen pickup inherits the 330-cell solid polymer electrolyte fuel cell stack of the Mirai and three high-pressure hydrogen tanks, enabling it to deliver an actual driving range of 600 kilometers after refueling.

Toyota says it targets sales of 200 000 hydrogen vehicles by 2030. The Japanese government has even more elaborate ambitions with a target of 800 000 fuel cell hydrogen vehicles by 2030.

Hydrogen taxi fleet

In Paris, over 120 hydrogen taxis are already running under the Hype taxi brand, mostly Hyundai ix35 PCEVs and several Toyota Mirais. In December 2021, Hype announced that it had raised another €20 million with French hydrogen pioneers HRS and McPhy to expand that fleet to 10 000 by 2024.

Meant to be ready for the Olympics in the French capital, the latter includes 20 hydrogen filling stations in the Ile-de-France region. But since then, it remained utterly quiet around the roll-out of this 10 000-car fleet.