2007 Toyota Sienna Ce 7 Passenger 4dr Mini Van For Only $5750
on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Toyota promoting Mirai as if hydrogen tax credit never went away

At the end of December, the US federal government let the $8,000 tax credit for hydrogen-powered vehicles expire. Despite this little wrinkle, Toyota is still promoting the upcoming 2016 Mirai fuel cell vehicle as a car that will cost under $50,000. In some cases a lot less, since it may also qualify for a $5,000 incentive in California. The car has a $57,500 MSRP, but Nihar Patel, vice president of North American Business Strategy for Toyota Motor Sales, spoke at the 2015 Washington Auto Show last week, and said that the Mirai could cost $44,500 in California. You can see this in the video at around minute four. Toyota knows that the federal incentives have expired, since the real news from the show was Patel's public request to the federal government that the $8,000 tax credit be extended. "We think that the federal credit expiration last year puts [hydrogen] customers in a fairly disadvantageous postion," he said. Plug-in vehicle buyers can still get up to $7,500 tax credit and, "we believe that this inequity needs to be fixed," he said. You can see this in the video at minute 10:20. Toyota said including both the after-incentives price and the call to reinstate those incentives was intentional since it shows a discrepancy between hydrogen and plug-in vehicles in the eyes of the feds. We asked Toyota's director of Energy and Environmental Research, Technical and Regulatory Affairs, Robert Wimmer, for more details on Toyota's request. "[The Mirai] being a ZEV and battery electrics also being ZEVs, we just want to make the playing field as level as possible," he said, adding that any extension would last "for the run of the vehicle," which would be three years. He admitted that the extension might only be for one or two years, if it happens at all. (A Toyota spokesperson clarified to AutoblogGreen that the Mirai program will not end after three years.) And that's the problem. "The tax process is difficult to predict," he said. "The two challenges we have now are that both houses of Congress are Republican and also that there has been talk for a while about comprehensive tax reform. If that moves forward, then extenders would probably be put on the back burner as comprehensive tax reform is discussed." Wimmer would not reveal any details about how Toyota is pressuring the government to act, only saying that Toyota's has people lobbying up on Capitol Hill.

The real reason automakers are giving away free hydrogen

Just like Hyundai did with its Tucson fuel cell, Toyota is offering free hydrogen fuel with the $57,500 Mirai H2 sedan. Toyota is being a bit vague about the details, saying simply that Mirai drivers will get, "complimentary hydrogen fuel for up to three years." Turns out, the reason that the hydrogen avant-garde will not be paying anything at the pump isn't because the automakers want to give them a boost or because the OEMs are kind. Instead, it's simply impossible to accurately charge people for hydrogen right now. It's simply impossible to accurately charge people for hydrogen right now. At an in-depth hydrogen seminar this week as part of the Mirai preview, three representatives from various hydrogen organizations revealed that the current hydrogen stations (most of which are in California) are not set up to accurately measure the hydrogen that is dispensed. Without this little bit of information, you can't charge customers for the fuel they use. Toyota is well aware of this, and Toyota Motor Sales' national manager of environmental, safety and quality communications, John Hanson, said that, "There are no set standards, so there is no way to charge people for anything." Alberto Ayala, the deputy executive officer for the California Air Resources Board, said CARB is in the middle of developing a way to sell a given amount of hydrogen, "which up to this point doesn't exist. If you think about it, it's a real simple yet real practical challenge. If you're going to pay for X amount of hydrogen, you're actually getting that amount of hydrogen." Ayala said it's not a difficult technical problem to measure the hydrogen as it goes into the car, but "we just have not done it. We are at a point where we are solving multiple remaining questions [with hydrogen infrastructure], and that just happens to be one of them." The National Institute of Standards and Technology says that there has been a discussion to change the current tolerance of two percent up to 10 or 20 percent, but that new technology should be able to measure accurately to within one percent. Air Liquide is working with Toyota to launch the Mirai in the US and Air Liquide CEO Ole Hofelmann told AutoblogGreen that being able to charge customers will be key to the technology's success. "We need to make sure we accurately measure the gas," he said.

Toyota says you might have the 40-millionth Corolla ever built

The guy who bought the 50-millionth Toyota in the US got a free Camry and RAV4, but whoever in the world bought the 40-millionth Corolla in August gets a hearty "thank you" from the Japanese automaker. On sale since 1966, the Corolla is the best-selling nameplate in the world by a goodly margin (more than the Volkswagen Beetle and Ford Model T combined). So while you'd think that vehicle number 40 million would be sitting in a museum somewhere, Toyota can't even say in which country this milestone Corolla was sold, let alone to which customer.
One reason that Toyota is unsure where this Corolla was sold is the fact that the Corolla name itself is more than just the compact sedan sold in the US. On our shores alone, sales of the Matrix are lumped in with the Corolla, but around the world, numerous vehicles wear the Corolla name or share its platform. Scroll down for Toyota's press release, and it has also put together a website celebrating 47 years and 40 million sales for the Corolla... and counting.