Recently I saw a Mirai for the first time. It was parked on a street downtown near where I live. I pointed it out to my spouse. Her response was "That is a really ugly car!". I agreed.
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Toyota 'Mirai' Fuel Cell Sedan
- Thread starter ivog
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- Electric Vehicles
BluestarE3
Active Member
After driving off the dealer's lot and using up that first tank of hydrogen, how many years will a stranded Mirai owner have to wait until there's a hydrogen station built nearby so that he/she can refuel the car? By then, the Model 3 will have been out in large numbers, with its owners refueling at home or at numerous public charging stations, including Tesla's Superchargers.
cpa
Active Member
Toyota had a big production crew there covering this. I should have taken more pictures of what was going on, but was busy answering questions and doing the general Evangelizing that most of us do when presenting our cars to the public. The Toyota crew had a large drone in the air, flying around taking pictures of the Mirai's. There was also a TV crew from somewhere filming an interviewer talking to one of the Toyota crew. As you can see in the picture, not a lot of people looking at them. Most of the interest was around a VW conversion by a group out of San Diego.
I spoke with two of the Mirai owners/leasers. One lived 2 blocks away from a hydrogen station and was 3 months into his lease. The other guy was a gadget freak who confessed to always liking to try new things. Had to make a definite effort not to burst anyones bubble or ask questions like: What on Earth prompted you to do this?
Strangely enough, I ended up passing a Hyundai Tuscon FCEV on the way home from the event.
The event was part of an exhibit ongoing at the museum. There were about 20 Tesla's out front, including a green roadster. And there were about 20 EV's of various sorts inside the fenced off normal parking lot. Cool place, they even have a 1975 AMC Pacer inside...
Through July 31: The Electric Car: Fad or Future? - Come Ride With Us - Automobile Driving Museum
RT
I spoke with two of the Mirai owners/leasers. One lived 2 blocks away from a hydrogen station and was 3 months into his lease. The other guy was a gadget freak who confessed to always liking to try new things. Had to make a definite effort not to burst anyones bubble or ask questions like: What on Earth prompted you to do this?
Strangely enough, I ended up passing a Hyundai Tuscon FCEV on the way home from the event.
The event was part of an exhibit ongoing at the museum. There were about 20 Tesla's out front, including a green roadster. And there were about 20 EV's of various sorts inside the fenced off normal parking lot. Cool place, they even have a 1975 AMC Pacer inside...
Through July 31: The Electric Car: Fad or Future? - Come Ride With Us - Automobile Driving Museum
RT
Wow, Toyota is sure carpet bombing anyone who ever searches for Mirai with ads. Tired of those incessant Yahoo dating ads? Just do a Google search for Mirai and you will never see another dating ad again!
I put a red box around all the Mirai ads that I could find, story links too. Didn't click on the "Order Request Hydrogen Stations" ad, I'll bet that was an interesting rabbit hole...
I put a red box around all the Mirai ads that I could find, story links too. Didn't click on the "Order Request Hydrogen Stations" ad, I'll bet that was an interesting rabbit hole...
BluestarE3
Active Member
Toyota have probably spent more money advertising this monstrosity than Tesla have on their entire line-up
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Be sure to click on it to support TMC.I saw a Mirai banner ad here too on the TMC forums.
benjiejr
Technogeekextraordinaire
I'm Japanese and Mirai means future, so I thought it was appropriate to place this plate on the REAL future...
Just ran the calculations for the lease:
The MSRP is 57500 cash
or
$499/month with $3600 down with free H2 up to $15 K of fuel and $13 K in rebates/credits...
Bank gets the rebates and the fuel is already included.
Subtract out the fuel and rebates (since they are baked into the price). That means the car is $29,500
Something does not make sense for the lease.
That means the residual value is like $11,000, or losing ~2/3 of its value after 3 years.
That does not seem right, not at all.
The MSRP is 57500 cash
or
$499/month with $3600 down with free H2 up to $15 K of fuel and $13 K in rebates/credits...
Bank gets the rebates and the fuel is already included.
Subtract out the fuel and rebates (since they are baked into the price). That means the car is $29,500
Something does not make sense for the lease.
That means the residual value is like $11,000, or losing ~2/3 of its value after 3 years.
That does not seem right, not at all.
You pay 21,564 USD over three years. After receiving say 10k USD in fuel, that means you've paid 11,564 USD to cover the depreciation of the car. (10k USD in fuel would cover ~50k miles at 10 USD/kg.)
The car costs 44,500 USD after incentives, which means the residual is ~33,000 USD after three years. And the car has lost 26% of it's value.
Something certainly doesn't make sense, but it's not that the residual is too low, but rather that the residual is too high. This is easily explained by Toyota chosing to lose money on every car, to meet it's CARB obligations.
Yes, I was counting it as part of the base price (minus all the incentives first). Think your method makes better sense,
If the fuel was removed $10 K over 36 months or $15 K over 36 months, the lease would be between $82 -$220 per month (makes no sense)
It would be really interesting to see the breakdown of leases vs buying, and even a breakdown of vested interests vs public.
I think you are right, it's a ZEV credit grab.
There was never any question that this was the case from the start.
The Mirai apparently wasn't priced sufficiently low to sell: Toyota Mirai lease price drops to $349/month
A three year lease now costs 15,063 USD. After covering ~6k USD worth of hydrogen (36k miles), 9k will go towards the depreciation.
The car costs 44,500 USD after incentives, which means the residual is ~35,500 USD after three years. And the car has lost 20% of it's value, if the math were to make sense.
If we assume the car actually drops 50% in value, Toyota loses 13,650 USD per car for every leased Mirai, plus whatever losses they have on top of the MSRP. Plus, the government is out 13,000 USD.
And here is another thing... All the pure BEV's that only get 85-100 miles per charge that are coming off their initial 3 year leases will end up being sold for quite a bit less than what the residual likely is. Because of the newer higher range cars available. So some lower income buyers will end up getting a nice subsidized vehicle to use around town that costs very little to operate.
When there Mirai's come off their initial 3 year lease down the road, it's entirely possible that there will still be little, and possibly no hydrogen infrastructure available for refueling them. Just depends on when Toyota throws in the towel. The resale value of the Mirai's will probably set an all time low for initial depreciation.
I could foresee a situation where some of the VW settlement money goes toward some number of hydrogen refueling stations. Since their usage will be tracked and reported on, we can compare it to the BEV chargers that also will be installed as part of the settlement. If Toyota eventually stops selling the Mirai, or just produces a few hundred per year, the hydrogen stations will see almost no use or at best flat use. We will also see how much cost is involved in operating those stations, and whether the car leasers/owners eventually decide to sell their cars and move onto something more practical. Eventually the powers that be will see this, and the plug will eventually get pulled. I might just have to start another thread watching fuel cell vehicle sales, that also tracks hydrogen station usage. I love a good death spiral...
RT
When there Mirai's come off their initial 3 year lease down the road, it's entirely possible that there will still be little, and possibly no hydrogen infrastructure available for refueling them. Just depends on when Toyota throws in the towel. The resale value of the Mirai's will probably set an all time low for initial depreciation.
I could foresee a situation where some of the VW settlement money goes toward some number of hydrogen refueling stations. Since their usage will be tracked and reported on, we can compare it to the BEV chargers that also will be installed as part of the settlement. If Toyota eventually stops selling the Mirai, or just produces a few hundred per year, the hydrogen stations will see almost no use or at best flat use. We will also see how much cost is involved in operating those stations, and whether the car leasers/owners eventually decide to sell their cars and move onto something more practical. Eventually the powers that be will see this, and the plug will eventually get pulled. I might just have to start another thread watching fuel cell vehicle sales, that also tracks hydrogen station usage. I love a good death spiral...
RT
BluestarE3
Active Member
Yep, even if there's no growth in the number of EV charging locations or, for some weird reason, all public EV charging stations disappear suddenly, one can still fuel a BEV from any electrical outlet (albeit slowly if using 110v, but it'll still work). Same can't be said for hydrogen fueling locations. Resale market for a used Mirai will be limited to those few locations that already have a hydrogen station.
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If you have an appropriate EVSE with you, any RV park can charge an EV faster than 90% of the EV charging stations out there (only the Sun Coast system, HPWCs and the various DCFC options are faster.)
I'm actually pretty surprised they managed to lease out 600 plus Mirais so far, with over 300 last month.
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