They're going to have to pay people to take those Mirais at the rate things are going.
The Mirai itself is a wonderful vehicle, but I don’t recommend purchasing one; for me I believe it was a huge financial mistake. I still owe about $35K but I’d be lucky to get an offer for $15K if I were to sell it now. I’m active in a Mirai Facebook group and I’ve heard stories of dealerships refusing to accept Mirais as trade-in offers, and I’ve also heard of trade-ins falling through because the owner’s Mirai loan was so underwater that attempting to roll over the remaining Mirai loan’s balance on another vehicle exceeds the lender’s loan to value limits.
It was a good offer in theory, but the H2 infrastructure never caught up.
2. I live in an apartment complex that lacks EV chargers. My landlord has no plans to install them, so buying an EV meant being entirely dependent on public chargers.
3. The hydrogen situation looked more optimistic in 2022, with new stations being planned and with infrastructure improvements Coming Soon(TM).
Of course, gasoline prices fell, but hydrogen prices went through the roof in 2023. When I bought my Mirai in November 2022, hydrogen cost $19.70/kg at True Zero stations; most stations in Silicon Valley are operated by True Zero. A month after I purchased my Mirai, prices rose to $23.75, then again the following month to $26.75. These price hikes were blamed on the spike in natural gas prices that occurred in early 2023. But while natural gas prices did fall, hydrogen prices never fell; in fact, they kept increasing until it reached $36 in summer 2023, which remains the price at True Zero stations.
Thankfully True Zero’s stations in Silicon Valley have been relatively reliable. Every now and then there would be supply-related outages, but they have been resolved relatively quickly in Silicon Valley. However, the situation is different in Southern California, and I feel especially bad for Sacramento-area Mirai drivers, who are reliant on one Iwatani station that gets so much traffic that there is a waitlist app! People have waited hours in line for fuel there.
The silver lining is that my Mirai came with a $15,000 fuel card that I use for purchasing fuel, so I don’t have to deal with the direct costs now. However, at $36/kg my card will likely run out by the end of the year, and once it does I’m on the hook for paying nearly $200 for a full tank, with a range of about 300 miles. By comparison, the Prius c that I traded in upon purchasing my Mirai cost $56 to fill up when gas was $7/gal, and it had a range of roughly 360 miles.
I’m hoping that hydrogen production will increase this year as a result of the energy bill Biden signed last year, which has provisions for investing in hydrogen. The Mirai is a wonderful luxury car, but I admit that if Toyota announced a buyback option for the Mirai, then I’d hand over the keys immediately and revert to a hybrid like a Prius or a Crown.
That seems like terrible $/mile even if you were seeing your original price of roughly half. My cmax (phev, but i rarely charge it) does 500-700 miles on a 14 gallon gas tank depending on speed and style. Even at $7/gallon, that's way better $/mile.
Business idea: buy Mirais, pull out and sell the H2 systems, and drop in battery packs to make them BEVs.
And it’s not like you can make your own fueling station at home. Doing so it an hilariously difficult engineering with plenty of potential to blow yourself up. I mean it’s easy to make hydrogen. It’s just difficult to make hydrogen at this scale and even when you do it still has to be compressed.
To build one in California costs 1.5-2m, and I actually found the company that owns the patent on the home hydrogen refueling system, but I imagine that’s not cheap enough to make up for the money saved on the car.
https://residentialhydrogenpower.com/product/sfha-model-300/
If the fueling system is compatible, perhaps they would use these cars as company vehicles.
I can't think of anyone else that would have a private hydrogen fuel station.