I think it’s safe to say we have a bit of a morbid fascination with the Toyota Mirai here. There’s something about this car, which is on one level a technological marvel, and yet at the same time might just be the least desirable and usable car you can buy in the world today. I just can’t fathom why anyone would want to buy a Mirai? Even a bunch of people who own Mirais can’t fathom why they own Mirais, at least according to a lawsuit. It’s not really the car’s fault; it’s more a fault of the overall hydrogen fueling infrastructure which, charitably, is piping-hot wet garbage. These hydrogen fuel stack cars can really only exist in Southern California, which is why this ad for one for sale in Elkhart, Indiana is so fascinating. And baffling.
We’ve seen Mirais for sale far from their only reasonable fueling options before, but in most cases, they ended up there accidentally, with purchasing managers for dealerships confusing them for Priuses or assuming they were of the expected, plug-in battery electric variety of car, not the kind that needs Hindenberg juice. This particular case is a little more fascinating because it seems to have been brought to Indiana intentionally, and then, somehow, sold to someone else. Here’s how the ad explains why it’s here:
“Note: this runs on Hydrogen gas We don’t have it around this area. Previous owner brought it here from California and did not realize there’s no fuel stations here. Clean title 52k Car runs great just need fueled up, has very little fuel left in it so bring a trailer.”
I have so many questions. So many. Mostly, how the hell does someone – not just any someone, someone who willingly decided to buy a hydrogen-fueled car and has presumably been living with this car for the past, what six or so years – just, I don’t know, forget to check if they can get hydrogen fuel for their car in the place they’re moving to?
Filling up at a hydrogen station isn’t something you can easily ignore; even if you live in the state that is the heart of the hydrogen fueling infrastructure, the state that has the greatest density of hydrogen refueling stations, we’re only talking about 50 stations across the entire state. Remember, this is a state that takes up most of the United States’ West Coast. Anyone driving a hydrogen car would, I think, be acutely aware that they can’t just go to any gas station, and real planning is needed for refueling.
So how could you move to a new state and pay to ship your car without, I don’t know, at least doing one freaking Google search to see if you can fill up the damn car anywhere in the state? Who does that? You know where the closest hydrogen station is to Elkhart, Indiana? It’s not even in the country. It’s in Canada. Specifically, 352 miles away in Mississauga, Ontario. Even a completely full Mirai couldn’t drive there on one tank of hydrogen, because the range is 40 miles less than the distance. And you’d need your passport.
If you want to refill and remain in America, you’re really screwed, because the closest station is 1800 miles away, in Corona, California:
How? How does someone get themselves in a situation like this? And, even more fascinating is that the seller is not the original owner! That means the person running this ad bought this useless, shiny boat anchor from the person who didn’t think to check if they could fuel their car in their new home, so… what was that conversation like?
Did this person know the car was essentially impossible to refill where they were when they bought it? Or did they buy it thinking they had a line on some other source of hydrogen? I mean, I suppose that’s possible; there have been some attempts to start a Midwest hydrogen fueling station, or perhaps there’s a way to use industrial hydrogen, or they have a spaceship in orbit with a Bussard Ramscoop or something like that. But beyond that, I really don’t understand why anyone would have bought or brought this thing to Elkhart, Indiana.
I reached out to the seller to try and get the full story, but so far I haven’t gotten a response. I did offer them a grand for the car, though, because this could be a fun Autopian project car. I mean, pretty much anything we do to or with it would be the first time that thing had been done to or with a hydrogen fuel cell car, right?
Top graphic images: Facebook Marketplace seller
This calls for some Changli-level shenanigans. I’m thinking Sawzall, fuel tank…
Yep, just install the Mr.Fusion with woodscrews and Torch is good to go.
My barber in Northern California needed a commute vehicle for his 49 mile one way commute. The Toyota dealer talked him out of the Corolla he wanted and into a Mirai, using incentives to make a deal. The only fueling station was at the work location end of his commute. Sure enough, one day he ran out of range on his way to work. He got his a** chewed by a tow driver who refused to offer refueling, choosing out of potentially getting blown to smithereens. When he came into work, I asked him if he’d ever heard of the Hindenburg.
I lived a less than a mile away from one of the hydrogen stations and there was a crazy promotion some years aback that credited the buyer of a Mirai something like two years worth of fuel and I still didn’t bite. Sadly a white whale of a car.
I want to buy it and swap the fuel cell for a small range extender / generator !!!! Maybe a rotary from a busted mx30
?
Mazda MX30s only got the range extender outside of the US. So I assume that’s where you are Zipn. 🙂 A Mirai with the guts of any halfway decent EV would be nice… maybe it’d be possible to use the original electric motors from the Mirai and just use the battery pack and controllers from the donor EV.
Sadly, so few Mirais have been sold there’s not much chance anyone will bother to attempt such a swap.
Sure. Swap in the drive train of a Prius or a Camry hybrid if you’re feeling saucy and run it on CNG rather than H2. You might even be able to sell the fuel stack to recoup some of the cost.
I hear there’s a market in the balkans.
Pretty sure they’d do just as well with scrap beer kegs full of ANFO.
I wouldn’t really know how to compare them, especially for weight.
Surely for brisance only nuclear could surpass hydrogen?
Friend of mine works metal and has all sorts of experience with explosives.
The only thing he’s afraid of is pure oxygen.
He says it can burn anything.
As a chemist and former instructor of chemistry I am obligated to point out pure oxygen can burn nothing. Oxygen is an oxidizer and combustion (burning) requires fuel as well. Sometimes that fuel is metal.
Whew! I feel better now!
ANFO will do the job just fine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
I know anfo is often used in mining now.
Chemistry is my weakest area, so I’m sure I have some gaps in the subject.
I was told once that an explosion is extremely rapid oxidation.
Does that seem accurate?
That is as good a basic description as any. But of course only for combustion based explosions. It would not apply to say nuclear or electrical discharge (e.g. lightning)
A more general description I think would be a sudden release of energy which generates a shock wave.
Of course
This would be a good candidate for an electric swap. You can get a nearly-new body and interior for the price of a good set of wheels and tires, then strip out all the hydrogen parts (and possibly selling some of them). It would be comfortable and modern, and a quite a sleeper.
Time for Torch to get back into the Autopian Lab and get to cracking on those H2O molecules. He’ll need lots of fuel for the obligatory cross country trek.
At $2950, maybe it’s a good candidate for an engine swap or electrification? I dunno… it makes no sense but I love the absurdity.
Think of the possibilities!
“Sure, another nice Bugatti.
My car runs on moonjuice though!”
LS, baby!
This feels like a perfect Autopian fleet vehicle. A car that really should not exist and yet it does.
For Sale: Toyota Mirai. Ran When Parked.
I think you overestimate the education levels of some Americans, Torch.
Totally understand all the talk about EVs back in the day and where I live if you don’t have home charging taking 21 hours you could only drive to Pittsburgh and back and then you had to go back because poor range and no chargers. A little better now
I‘m absolutely sure there is plenty of hydrogen in Elkhart, Indiana. The only problem is to get it out of thin air and into your tank.
Or out of the water, of which it is about 2/3, in atom count.
Or better yet, pee: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+urine+have+more+hydrogen+than+water&t=opera&ia=web
Come on, who doesn’t want to fuel their Lexus LS-based second gen Toyota Mirai at home, having extracted the hydrogen needed to fuel it from their own urine? Think of the savings! 😀
Guesstimating how much beer people in that region drink… this may work.
Honestly, this seems the best solution. Set up some solar panels and create/store hydrogen yourself to fuel the car. I’m sure the paperwork/permits needed to do such a thing (have a tank of high pressure hydrogen at home) would be aggravation prohibitive… far worse than the actual engineering required.
Look up the cost of a 10,000 psi H2 compressor, and the footprint of the whole shebang and get back to us on that .
I was being semi-facetious of course. Few folks would want to have a tank of compressed hydrogen at home, and in most places it’s likely illegal to do so. As far as the compressor (if I’m fantasizing) I was thinking that an ambitious miscreant could maybe pick up one of those old ‘Phil’ home systems that Honda used to sell, and jury rig that… there’s probably one or two sitting out in the lot at Apex Electronics salvage right now, though they tend to save the good/big stuff and only rent it as props.
I’m somewhat familiar with Phil. It was built to handle natural gas, not pure hydrogen. Hydrogen of course is well known to embrittle many materials so using a Phil to compress hydrogen is about as wise as diving to the bottom of the Atlantic in a sketchy carbon fiber submersible.
The Phil also only went to 3k psi, not 10k which yields a range of only 90-120 miles.
Then there’s the question of efficiency. I’d bet the losses of producing/compressing/transferring H2 are notably greater than losses of just charging an EV directly.
And as you mentioned there is the issue of room. The compressor and hydrolyzer will require a lot more room than a L2 charger. Much more maintainance too.
At the end of the day the maths are very hard to juggle in favor of a cheap used HFCV over a nearly as cheap, used BEV (or hybrid if the electricity isn’t free).
Swapping that FC for a NG burning ICE hybrid drive train and Philling those tanks with CNG I think is the better bet.
You should’ve tried to and get the full story first, promising exposure beyond his wildest dreams, then offer him the grand once you had the story. Now he’s in a huff!
That station in Corona is in fact closed:
Corona is offline for an unexpected/unplanned technical issue. The problem is still being diagnosed. An ETA will be posted when available.
https://h2fcp.org/stationmap
The Ontario CNG 76 in Ontario, CALIFORNIA is marginally closer anyway. It’s close to the ONT airport in the glorious Inland Empire. Jason should know this, since he’s a former LA resident. I mean, he knew where Corona was…
I don’t think that the Ontario 76 has a working Hydrogen pump either as far as I can tell. I heard horror stories about people in the IE who bought Mirais and then all the Hydrogen stations nearby closed or had pumps break (at least the ones in Riverside, MoVal, Corona, and Ontario), leaving them to drive to Diamond Bar or deep into the OC anytime they need to refuel (at $200 a tank)!
I’m betting that ETA is never…
““Note: this runs on Hydrogen gas We don’t have it around this area. Previous owner brought it here from California and did not realize there’s no fuel stations here. “
I’m wondering if that’s the truth. OR… if the buyer for the dealer bought it at auction and had it shipped… and now they’re using that story as a cover for their embarrassment
“with purchasing managers for dealerships confusing them for Priuses or assuming they were of the expected, plug-in battery electric variety of car, not the kind that needs Hindenberg juice”
In general, I often know more about a given car than the dealer selling it.
Dealers often don’t know shit about what they’re selling and will say anything to make a sale.
“I reached out to the seller to try and get the full story, but so far I haven’t gotten a response”
I did the same thing a while back with another dealer selling a Mirai. All I got were BS responses that were either from a chatbot or someone with chatbot levels of knowledge.
” I did offer them a grand for the car, though, because this could be a fun Autopian project car”
This reminds me of the best use case for a used Mirai I’ve come across so far:
https://autos.yahoo.com/ukraine-weaponizing-hydrogen-cars-183000676.html
I just mentioned the Ukraine thing above before I read you comment and saw your link. Since it involves giving invaders of a soverign nation the what for, I agree that that is the best use for a used Mirai, but a theoretical full-EV conversion comes in second, with reforming your own hydrogen at home from urine a distant third.. 😉
I still don’t know where they got that fuel tank, but surely Ukraine deserves some sort of automotive award for creativity, even though it doesn’t fit the definition of typical hot rodding.
I want to mention the improvised explosive commonly used for suicide vests, since a recent medal of honor awarded involved one. The formula uses precursors that can’t easily be restricted, but the result is highly unstable and gets worse over time.
If you encounter such an event, even a handgun round fired into the material will detonate it.
An enterprising individual passing through with an empty car dolly might offer the dealership a token amount to get rid of their white elephant, then haul it to SoCal and sell it for ten grand or so.
Someone set us up the bomb.
All your Mirai’s are belong to us
You have no chance to refuel make your time.
You want something crazier: there’s a dealer down the street from me here in central IL that has had a Mirai on their lot for nearly a year ( https://www.ucauto.com/details/used-2019-toyota-mirai/117842887 ). I stopped in last October to ask about it; salesperson said it was a local trade. Apparently the previous owner moved here from California, shipped the car and then realized they couldn’t fuel it anywhere, took it to the dealer…and the dealer agreed to take it in trade (which just blows my mind. Did they seriously not know?).
Until recently they didn’t even have it listed on their site, and I didn’t ask about price. I see they have it listed at $6,000 which is another level of bonkers. Especially since they only got a couple test drives out of it before running out of fuel so it’s now dead in the water.
LOL wut!?
“The engine is functioning properly and has no issues”
“The transmission shifts very smoothly”
Dead in the water…of it’s own making!
You should have offered $500. Might have made for an interesting 24 hours of lemons conversion project.
Ditch the hydrogen stuff, rig up some sort of generator to directly power the existing electric motor and take it racing!
Robot Cantina to the rescue! I bet a Kubota diesel or 420cc Predator would make a great hybrid engine.
Prime contender for a hellcat swap?
/s
Dude! It’s a Toyota. Keep it in the family with a 2JZ swap!
1UZ. V8 Mirai!
That’s something Sarah-n-tuned should do, when she finishes stuffing that Tundra V8 into the first-gen Celica for her dad. 🙂
Do you think it’s more likely that the previous owner brought it to Indiana, or that a dealership bought it at auction without knowing what it was?
Needs an LS conversion. What the hell, it’s just another bad decision.
Ha, I saw a Mirai on the road here in San Diego last weekend and was surprised to see one even here.
I see them occasionally around the south SFBA.
Mirais used to be all over the place in Sacramento. It’s a government town where a lot of clean air policy gets written, so that figures. There’s one filling station nearby but I think there used to be two.
Not surprised. The dude that bought my electric failed to 1) understand range and charging and 2) that there’s more to my home state than Chicago. He ended up renting a truck and trailer to haul it 300 miles home.
What?!? You can’t leave us dangling like this! There has to be more to this story.
I usually have better stories but not this time. I could tell there was some embarrassment when he realized he impulse bought and didn’t really investigate. At least he honored the deal!
Not surprised at all. People who bought those were looking for a bargain and tend to be full on the wrong coast mentality. The are always actively trying to sue Toyota because it runs on hydrogen and it costs more then they thought it would so their $15k of fuel ran out. Because it’s $4 a kg or something from the h70 or whatever they are calling the 700 bar compressed by h2. There tends to be the h35 places around universities for industrial and scientific uses. So you could essentially get half a tank if you could in full it. I doubt this indivial though that much ahead. Maybe they read the politicians wanted to make Indiania a hydrogen hub back in 2021. That’s coming on as nicely as that California high-speed train. But some yahoos still pushing it for aviation Indiana is tied to the aviation industry so who knows. They are very nice cars it’s really a shame they run on just about the dumbest fuel possible.
“Because it’s $4 a kg or something from the h70 or whatever they are calling the 700 bar compressed by h2.”
They wish!
“Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed the monthly average price of light-duty hydrogen fuel in California pump stations at $34.55/kg on Oct. 1 (2025), a 1.3% increase from the previous record-high set in January 2024.”
https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/energy-transition/100124-california-hydrogen-pump-prices-for-light-duty-vehicles-reach-new-highs
Ah must have been $40 kg I was seeing. I don’t pay that much attention to it because it’s dumb. I do recall now someone saying it was about $30 a kg a year or two ago.
I prefer heavy-duty hydrogen myself.
Yeah, gotta use deuterium if it’s a 3/4T truck or heavier.
Gives it a nice glow
Always so sad the fight between the ²H and the H³ people. There only agreement is H² is just too common. And both want to be called heavy
Tritium gas tubes in watches beat SuperLuminova for me.
As long as it’s not ball prices. Amourlite has it right but hard to knock a Yelang. Always appreciate Jodie from JOMW finding a random Chinese tritium watch off AliExpress though.
Have you tried metallic hydrogen? It’s really quite breathtaking.
Cummins is still researching hydrogen conversions.
There are a few hydrogen ls out there too it’s just highly impractical. MAN and another European company researching it mainly for marine applications. They had solve a lot of material issues. I believe they were using some kind of ceramic coating on the valves and possibly the rotating assembly. Still not tested thoroughly. Cng and lng is far more practical and stable. Even for fuel cells. Really the decarbonize people are the only ones yelling about at this point. My response is you are carbon based see ya later.
I first heard of fuel cells when someone at NASA built a motorcycle running on one apparently fed by gas or diesel.
I recently ran across mention of the bike, but no more details.
It sounded like a brilliant idea, but there must have been issues with it, like cost.
My dad has been obsessed with fuel cells from at least the early 70s. He always felt they were the future. So I was exposed to them ever since I can remember. I was ok the train for a while but just like windmills the more you know and know people in the industry your prospective changes. One of his friends was an DOE physicist / engineer who was involved with fuel cell research. He believed in them to an extent using natural gas but thought hydrogen as impractical sort of the same way as a table top nuke reactor. Apparently power and oil companies wanted to kill them. India has had good success with them as backup generators but they typically need a fairly static load. They typically run them on lpg or natural gas. Submarines and some ships run on them it works and makes sense in those applications. The bloom boxes that seem to be the bell of the ball in fuel cells tend to hide a lot of their data but apparently work. Very strange units.
All we need is a solar-powered water molecule splitter. It can work sun-up to sun-down, filling your home hydrogen tank. When you get home, just top up with the day’s production.
Or do the same with an EV, and not spew water all over the roadway as you go on your way.
It’s funny how every “look how practical hydrogen is” example is easier with a BEV, except (theoretically) airplanes.
(Locomotives can be powered by overhead wires.)
While not public infrastructure, Toyota does have hydrogen in Kentucky along with all the automakers in the Detroit area. Whether they’d let you fuel is another question plus it is still further than 40 miles but closer than Missasauga.
This seems like a super cheap way to get parts for an EV project. Or just convert it to a full EV by replacing the fuel cell with batts.
I’ve thought about that a few times, and then stopped myself with “why stick LEAF batteries in a Mirai if I could just drive a LEAF?”
The bright side is that if you can’t drive it anywhere, fewer people have to look at it.
I actually think the 2nd gen is the most attractive Toyota since the Mk4 Supra. Granted, that’s not saying a lot in the days of the predator grill, but still.
The 2nd gen is really nice-looking. It’s frustrating that Toyota can build handsome cars but so rarely chooses to.
This. Our Highlander was designed by four blindfolded committees who hated each other.
There must be options for tasteful aftermarket grilles for Toyotas and Lexuses.
If not, here is a free business idea for enterprising individuals.
Expanding your offerings to improved BMW grilles should be pretty lucrative as well.