Toyota Australia has brought in three units of the Mirai sedans, Toyota’s latest hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
The cars will, over the course of its 3-year stint Down Under, will help engineers at Toyota Australia become more familiar with the technical aspects of the technology while being used for promotional and stakeholder engagement activities on the side.
Of course, cars that rely on hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity need their a way to ‘refuel’, and Toyota has accompanied the arrival of these three Mirais with a portable refuelling station which is set to arrive in the coming months.
This refuelling system will have the ability to either be mounted on the ground or attached to a truck to make sure the cars are topped up when performing their promotional or educational duties across the country.
Dave Buttner, President of Toyota Australia, said: "After having a taste of the technology last October, we are incredibly excited to have not one, but three of the fuel cell vehicles back in Australia. We are looking forward to educating a whole new audience on this future technology and generating more awareness of fuel cell vehicles."
"We are extremely interested in fuel cell technology, but we need the relevant infrastructure in place before we can sell these vehicles in Australia. This will take time to develop so it is imperative that we take a whole of industry approach so that we can move these plans along as quickly as possible.”
"Fuel cell technology is expected to play a key role in the future and we do not want Australians to miss out on this."
Toyota is and has been investing heavily in the development and maturity of fuel cell technology, but like most alternative fuels requires a big shift in infrastructure to really flourish.
The fact that it remains one of the most promising and environmentally sustainable options for the future of personal transportation (and humanity’s energy dependency in general, for that matter) does not escape other automakers such as Honda and BMW, who also have more recently been developing their own technologies around it.
Indeed, the fuel cell converts stored hydrogen – the most abundant element in the universe - into electricity used to power the car with the only by product of that process being water vapour.
Toyota Australia is currently scheduled to display the Mirai vehicles at a number of conferences and events throughout the country over the coming months.
For more on Toyota vehicles, including pricing and specifications, check out our Showroom.
