Is hydrogen losing out? Toyota sold just 134 fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) in November
As 2024 draws to a close, sales figures show that Toyota's dream of popularising hydrogen cars is all but dead. According to the latest figures, the Japanese automaker sold just 134 FCEVs (fuel cell electric vehicles) worldwide in November. That's an 8.2 per cent drop from the same month in 2023.
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In Japan, sales of Toyota's hydrogen electric vehicles totalled just 29 units last month, down 17.1 per cent year-on-year. In the first eleven months of 2024, 661 units of Toyota FCEVs were sold in Japan. In the rest of the world, Toyota sold 105 FCEVs last month, down 5.4 per cent from the previous year, and 1,041 units from January to November, down 69 per cent from 2023. Toyota sold 4,023 FCEV units worldwide last year.
Toyota Mirai FCEV. Photo: Toyota
By comparison, Rivian, which is still considered a battery electric vehicle (BEV) startup, delivered an average of 3,339 vehicles per month to customers in the third quarter. In other words, Toyota's experiment with hydrogen technology looks like it will remain just an experiment.
Nevertheless, more and more automakers are announcing their intentions to build all-new hydrogen-fuelled cars in the near future, claiming that the market will eventually grow thanks to more refuelling stations and lower hydrogen prices. BMW, for example, is set to launch a production FCEV in 2028, while Honda recently unveiled the CR-V e:FCEV plug-in hybrid.
Source: InsideEVs
