Auckland chosen for drive programme involving Mirai sedans.

METROPOLITAN Auckland will before the end of this year become a regular beat for Toyota’s hydrogen car, the Mirai.

The fuel cell five-seater sedan is being introduced to the public driving environment as a reinforcement of the brand’s thinking about what kinds of cars are required here as we wean away from fossil fuels.

Toyota New Zealand has clarified initial suggestion the trial will give public access to the model, say it is specifically aimed at invited corporates with interest in fossil fuel-evading technology.

Auckland is also the most practical location as Mirai is highly suited to city driving and, most vitally, Ports of Auckland is to provision the hydrogen.

Reputed to be the most expensive road car Toyota has developed, Mirai has involved in extended demonstration programmes around the world.

In most countries long-term involvers get to lease the model and that’s also the ultimate plan here. Costs have not been discussed but, as a barometer, in Australia a 36 month, 60,000km agreement, which includes fuel, works out at $NZ67,490.

TNZ will start with the two examples of the now outmoded, first generation version (as above). It shipped those cars here almost two years but they’ve basically been kept in storage at its Palmerston North headquarters since. Their use is simply to enable a start in 2021 and they will fulfil as tasters.

The push proper comes next year, when TNZ will add the latest, second gen edition, launched internationally last year, which is larger, more luxurious and offers big improvements in performance. Up to a dozen examples are set to come and these will be the models subject to lease.

The programme will run for at least two years in Auckland, though that’s open-ended. It ultimately might go national, assuming availability of hydrogen follows suit.

The car is set to be a fascination. Fuel cell cars are electric car at heart, but the electricity they use is developed on-board, through a chemical process, electrolysis. This converts hydrogen gas held under high pressure into electrical energy, with no tailpipe emissions.

Around the same dimension as a Camry sedan, the latest version has a 134kW/300Nm electric motor on the rear axle, driven by a 128kW 330-cell polymer electrolyte fuel-cell stack, three hydrogen storage tanks (offering 5.6kg combined), and a 1.2kWh lithium-ion battery.

A maximum driving range of 650km on the WLTP test cycle is claimed, as is a 9.2 second 0-100kmh time.

Although fuel cell technology has been trialled by a significant count of makers, there are pros and cons.

They are advantaged by delivering superior range than EVs can often provision and also appeal when refuelling, as replenishing the hydrogen tank takes around the same time required to fill up a conventional fossil-fuelled vehicle.

However, they are more expensive than like-sized EVs, which themselves are often criticised for being too pricey for general use.

On top of that, hydrogen is expensive and challenging to source nationally.

Just three brands have FCEVs in general production: Toyota, Honda and Hyundai.

The Honda car, called the Clarity, has not been brought here but Hyundai New Zealand has had several of its Nexo crossovers operating locally as demonstration units for more than a year.

Consideration of potential applicants for the Mirai is under way and feedback has been positive, TNZ chief executive Neeraj Lala says. All are leaders in sustainability practices and have expressed interest in hydrogen.

“A number of them are looking at sustainable ways of better using their fleets, including car sharing concepts that will work for this.”

Hyundai had to build its own hydrogen refuelling rig, sited near its Auckland headquarters. TNZ will do likewise and have a specialist technician undertake the job.

Lala says getting the cars into circulation is reinforcement of his brand’s contention that the populist view of the future of motoring being simply about switching to battery electric cars is overly simplistic.

Toyota is definitely committed to taking leadership in ambition to divest from fossil fuels, he says, however, a wholesale switch to battery cars – which the Government is keen to push – simply isn’t a be-all solution.

Toyota is developing electric cars and will two here relatively soon; a Lexus, based on the small UX crossover, and a Toyota, which is similar in look at shape to the RAV4 and currently is called the BZ4X.

TNZ concurs with a head office view that it’s more realistic that the next few decades of motoring will still have to involve the mild hybrids that it has achieved strong penetration with and next step plug-in hybrids, which both still use fossil fuels.

Hydrogen has been proposed for heavy vehicle use, as a replacement for diesel, but last year the Motor Industry Association, which represents the interests of all new vehicle distributors here, said it could see it being utilised for light cars.

It cited last year that more showroom-ready cars from other makers would be hitting the road over the next few years and New Zealanders should achieve opportunity to enjoy them.

However, MIA chief executive David Crawford said then that having a proper commercial refuelling infrastructure was an imperative.

At that time a partnership between Taranaki’s Hiringa Energy, which describes itself as the first national company to dedicated to supply of ‘green’ hydrogen, and independent fuel retailer Waitomo Group proposing a nationwide hydrogen refuelling network was in the news.

Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of domestic resources an NZ is conceivably advantaged as it is placed to undertake almost all the favoured processes.

Reformation from natural gas, a fossil fuel but still a healthy resource here, is conceivably possible yet there is more impetus to creating it as a ‘clean’ fuel from renewable power like solar, wind, hydro and geothermal.

The MIA and TNZ favours making better use of wind turbines for creating the fuel during off-peak power generation periods. Both are also intrigued by a pilot plant working a geothermal field near Taupo. Conjecture about the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter being second-lifed as a hydrogen plant has also been noted by the industry.