A zero emissions driving future shouldn’t just mean an assault with battery-pure product, the new passenger vehicle market leader says.

Does hydrogen fuel cell technology measure up against battery electric? Toyota NZ is about to undertake a programme with the Mirai FCEV to show the benefits.

OUTSIDE the front entrance to Toyota New Zealand’s national headquarters in Palmerston North headquarters stand electric car chargers; installed a decade ago, so among the country’s first.

Parked up in the facility’s workshop, a pair of Mirai hydrogen fuel cell sedans, brought in two years ago.

Out on the nation’s roads, shoals of Toyota and Lexus hybrid cars. Petrol-electrics utilising what those conjoined brands euphemistically call ‘self-charging’ tech. Electric-assisted, but not really electric, not categorised such through lacking a vital ingredient of any means to mains replenish.

So, tick the boxes: Electric, plug-in electric, hybrid and hydrogen. Where we go from here; what’s relevant for the future?

Popular thought is that, ultimately, the world will be electric. Toyota New Zealand chief executive Neeraj Lala doesn’t disagree with that ideal. Per se. It’s just the finer detail that concerns. In public and Government thinking, electric seems to be defined as meaning “with batteries.” From the viewpoint of TNZ and Toyota Japan, it should also mean – with hydrogen – and, for quite some years yet, with fossil fuels.

Hybrids are hot. One in three new Toyotas are now in this format and last year’s registrations count of 8134 hybrid cars was a record count for the brand.

Intent to have a hybrid variant in all core passenger variants completes with a new generation of the seven-seater Highlander. Previously purely in petrol-keen V6, it arrives on July 1 with three of five versions in hybrid. Pre-launch sign-up is keen and 85 percent of those to sign up have gone for the new battery-fed four-cylinder drivetrain.

At the moment Toyota’s electric plug-in effort restricts to the Prius Prime, an enlarged version of a nameplate that kicked off the whole hybrid thing, all those years ago, in a hatchback form recently retired from NZ sale.

The next step, to full battery compulsion, is close for the market leader and its premium marque.

Toyota’s first wholly electric car, the BZ4X, will be here in 2022.

A fully battery-reliant Lexus, the UX300e, is about to roll out here. Talk is that a sister model is also close to coming to the boil. Toyota itself will next year have the BZ4X (hopefully a working name), size-wise an EV equivalent of the RAV4 crossover (which, in hybrid form, is TNZ’s most popular car). The first of seven in the BZ family. The letters stand for ‘Beyond Zero’; Toyota Japan’s new mantra.

Lala says people often ask how prepared Toyota is for the motoring life changes ahead. He says everything laid out above speaks to it being at high readiness; moreso than most brands.

Assuming, that is, that consumers can be broad-minded enough to see there’s more than one solution for the decades ahead.

Electric cars are capturing our imaginations and are also central to Government’s roadmap. But are EVs the only answer when fossil fuel products are retired, perhaps forcibly, from our driving lives, quite probably within the next 15 years?

Japan’s No.1 is definitely committed to taking leadership in ambition to divest from fossil fuels and also lowering CO2 counts.

Presently, Lala reminds, Toyota achieves the best national CO2 fleet average among fossil fuel vehicle providers and will continue to improve on this. To point where it believes it can achieve Government’s ideal of a 105 grams per kilometre average will be achieved within two years, and without influence from the electric models it will have by then.

But insofar as electric goes, TNZ says that’s simply not going to be a sole solution for years yet. If an electric option avails, it’s worth pursuing. But reality is that, not only in the here and now but also for perhaps the next two decades, the ideal that EV is an encompassing answer is simply naïve.

So a used import Nissan Leaf and a new Tesla isn’t the ultimate fix?

Not in Toyota’s book. It suggests, in full knowledge this will be controversial, that a multi-faceted approach, using all technologies for best purpose, is a better idea.

Neeraj Lala is all for electric cars … but he believes the definition of what constitutes a zero emissions vehicle needs to properly understood.

“From our end it (wholesale EV) is a very dangerous approach. Practical and sustainable solutions will come, but they are not going to be available all at the same time,” says Lala.

“We need solutions that customers want, not that Government dictates. It’s unfair to say to customers ‘you have to do this’. In some cases they could do it, but in some cases they cannot.

“Each customer has a different use and practicality (for a vehicle). If we fail to achieve this our customers will no longer choose our cars.

“Our range must be practical because they are used in various ways depending on the customer and the environment.

“It is necessary for people to be able to use our products practically in any environment, such as areas where even the supply of electricity is unstable or where the climate conditions are harsh.

“Ultimately, it is the customer who makes the choice. We believe zero emissions vehicles such as BEVs and FCEVs will become the new mainstream over the next two decades.

“Globally we have said our intent is to provide solutions for all outcomes. We’re not one of those companies that has said it will put all its eggs into one basket. We’re investing in everything.”

About the latter. Hardly driven until now, those Mirais are finally going to be put to use as a reinforcement of the brand’s future-now thinking.

Metropolitan Auckland will soon become a regular beat for the car, with corporates with interest in fossil fuel-evading technology set to be invited to try them out. The location has been chosen for several reasons; Mirai is highly suited to city driving, that’s where the country’s corporate base largely is and, most vitally, Ports of Auckland is to provision the hydrogen.

That TNZ is putting now outmoded first generation versions into this is simply to enable a start in 2021. Next year, it will switch to the latest, second gen edition, launched internationally last year, which is larger, more luxurious and offers big improvements in performance. Toyota New Zealand hopes to secure up to a dozen of these.

The Mirai will not be for sale, but will likely be available for prolonged use under a car-sharing mantle; what’s been coined an extended demonstration programme, running for at least two years in Auckland, though that’s open-ended. It ultimately might go national, assuming availability of hydrogen follows suit.

The cost to TNZ has not been shared, but establishing a fleet alone won’t be cheap. Reputed to be the most expensive road car Toyota has ever built, Mirai has never been on sale anywhere. In NZ, as in other countries it represents in, ultimate provision will be by lease. In Australia a 36 month, 60,000km agreement, which includes fuel, works out at $NZ67,490.

Setting aside the pros and cons of going hydrogen, the car is a fascination.

Mirai uses hydrogen in a high-pressure gas form; replenishment requires special technology, too.

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 Mirai 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.

TNZ is not first down this road. Hyundai New Zealand has had several Nexo crossovers operating locally as demonstration units for more than a year. However, Toyota’s ideas are more ambitious.

Consideration of potential applicants is under way and feedback has been positive, Lala says.

Using a closed group of users, rather than simply availing the car for a more general public trial, has benefits, but one driver is simply that those being approached are leading sustainability practices and have expressed interest in hydrogen. These include energy providers.

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

Initial sign-ups will achieve priority access to the new-generation model with opportunity to either use it as a dedicated fleet car, with TNZ covering fuelling cost, “effectively as a long-term lease.”

The hydrogen factor does add a complexity; just refuelling has challenges. 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.

The fuel itself is a hot topic, being expensive and not easily available. It has backing for use within the heavy transport sphere as an ultimate diesel alternate, but has become a harder acceptance for cars due to cost and complexity. Fuel cell vehicles are more expensive than like-sized EVs, which themselves are often criticised for being too pricey for general use, and just three car brands – Honda being the other - have put FCEVs into production.

Yet there is domestic support. The Motor Industry Association, which represents the interests of all new vehicle distributors here, says NZ is well placed to create hydrogen from a variety of domestic resources, spanning from reformation from natural gas, a fossil fuel but still a healthy resource here, to creating it from renewable power like solar, wind, hydro and geothermal.

Several big research involvements into this appear fruitful. The most high profile is 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.

If that goes ahead, then there will be every reason to allow the Mirais to locate in other parts of the country, Lala says.

The point of the exercise? It seems a stretch to think fuel cell cars will ever be Corolla common, but that’s not to point. It’s more about reminding that multiple solutions are required.

Lala believes questions need also be raised about NZ’s readiness for wholesale EV implementation, particularly beyond 2025, when tough Government requirements to reduce CO2 emissions impact.

“The next chapter of our road to carbon neutrality starts this year and spans the next nine years. Pure battery electric powertrains have always been on our long-term strategy (but) with considerable debate on the speed of introduction.

“We’re preparing to stay ahead of the trend to carbon neutrality by introducing 16 new electrified vehicles over the next five years, including at least six zero-emission products,” Lala says.

“From a product and technology perspective Toyota will be ready. But to really achieve this target, and move us all closer to carbon neutrality, the infrastructures, for both BEV (battery electric) charging and hydrogen refuelling, need to accelerate.”

An eco-car is an eco-car only if it is widely used and contributes to CO2 reduction where the source of refuelling has been from a sustainable supply, he says.

“I also believe that battery technology still needs innovation, but when there is a breakthrough, the shift to ZEVs will be significantly (more) rapid than the adoption of hybrids, and BEVs will eventually become a practical and affordable form of mobility for all.”

Yet, while infrastructures develop, until solutions for sustainable and ethical raw-material supply are found and until technology costs fully reduce “it’s important to continue to offer low carbon solutions to as many customers as possible.”