In Denmark, sales have fallen by 100 percent, while Toyota in the US is trying to save the honor of the hydrogen car with free fuel.
Here at home, the last hydrogen stations were taken out of operation last year. And in the US, sales have plunged by as much as 91 percent. In Denmark, the figure is 100 percent.
The sales, which are nearing a near standstill in the US, were 'carried forward' by just 99 new registrations of hydrogen cars in the US in the second quarter of 2024.
In Denmark, where Toyota has not stopped the sale of the Mirai hydrogen car either, not a single hydrogen car has been sold in the first half of 2024. This must be compared to the whole of 2023, when just one Mirai hit the streets. For that – in 2022 – it was just six cars.
That's what Autodrive writes.
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On the other side of the Atlantic, 73 Toyota Mirai and 26 Hyundai Nexo were sold. A car which is actually named after Nexo on Bornholm, but which the Danish importer withdrew from the model program when the hydrogen stations disappeared completely in Denmark.
Toyota is trying hard to save some of the glory of the hydrogen car by – at least in the US – offering customers huge discounts and free fuel. Even so, as recently as April, the brand has been sued for angering motorists in hydrogen cars in particular. Read more about it here.
Conversely, the Japanese have no intention of giving up the idea of hydrogen. Both fuel cells and cars whose internal combustion engines run on hydrogen are under development.
At the top of Toyota, they defend themselves with the fact that there are not enough raw materials in this world if everyone has to drive electric cars.
– Materials for batteries and renewable charging infrastructure will eventually be widely available.
– But it will take decades to scale up the minerals (for the batteries, ed.) and the infrastructure, says Gill Pratt, who is in charge of Toyota's research department, to Bloomberg.
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