Toyota: Mirai is first step on the road to entire 'zero-emissions' range

Newly launched fuel-cell vehicle likely to pave the way for hatch, station wagon, people carrier and SUV models

The arrival of the Mirai has brought the fuel cell revolution that bit closer

Toyota’s Mirai brought the fuel cell revolution that bit closer when it arrived in the UK last month. But the company won’t be stopping there.

Where the Mirai leads, a range of vehicles is slated to follow. These are likely to include hatch, station wagon, people carrier and SUV models – though even with the Mirai now on sale, the timescale remains long-term.

Accoring to Toyota’s Yoshikazu Tanaka, who masterminded the engineering work on the Mirai, hydrogen is between one and two decades behind hybrids in its suitability for mainstream applications. The technology is coming along fast – today’s fuel cells have more than twice the power-to-weight ratio of the units that were leading the way in 2008 – but there are still hurdles to overcome.

We know how to extract hydrogen from renewable energy sources, for example. But as of yet, the cost of doing so is enough to keep fuel cell vehicles out of the mainstream.

There’s also the awkward fact that at present, the hydrogen extraction process uses fossil fuel – and therefore creates carbon. So it’ll be some years before the Mirai and its like can truly claim to be zero-emission cars. But as it shows, that day is still coming.