Toyota has begun offering 70% discounts on sales of its Mirai XLE hydrogen car in California, in addition to 0% financing for up to six years and $15,000 of free H2 fuel.
The model — which has a manufacturers’ suggested retail price (MSRP) of $50,190 — is now available with a $35,000 discount when using the 0% financing, providing a sales price of $15,190. If including the value of the free fuel, this represents a cost to buyers of just $190.
Even without including the free fuel, the Mirai XLE is now the cheapest new car to buy in the US, beating the Nissan Versa, which starts at $18,330.
The XLE version of the Mirai had previously been available in California with a $25,000 discount.
The more expensive Mirai Limited model is now available in the state with a $43,000 discount (in addition to 0% financing and fuel vouchers), pushing its asking price down from an MSRP of $67,115 to $24,115 — a 64% discount.
In the first nine months of 2024, only 441 hydrogen-powered vehicles were sold in the US — with California being the only US state with hydrogen fuelling infrastructure — compared to 2,791 in the same period a year earlier (an 84.2% drop).
The fall in sales has been widely attributed to the high price of hydrogen fuel, the unreliability of fuelling stations and problems with the state's fuel supply.
According to analyst Platts, the average price of hydrogen fuel at California filling stations on 1 October last year was $34.55/kg. With a storage tank capable of holding 5.6kg, this means that the average price of filling up an empty tank would have been $193.48 at the time.
There was a hydrogen fuel shortage across southern California in 2023-24, which resulted in almost half of the state’s H2 refuelling stations being offline for many months.
Mirai drivers in the state were so incensed by the fuelling problems that they banded together to launch a class action lawsuit against Toyota last summer, accusing the automaker of failing to disclose or actively concealing that hydrogen fuel may be unavailable, that filling up the Mirai “takes many hours on average”, that fuel pumps freeze up and lock on to the cars, and that the cost of fuel increased so much that claims that the $15,000 fuel card will supply three years of fuel are “absolutely false”.
The current discounts are only available until February 3, according to Toyota’s website.
