The Paris 2024 Summer season Olympics are lower than two weeks away from their July 26 kickoff. The organizers are touting the occasion because the “greenest-ever,” with half the carbon footprint in comparison with earlier Video games. However a bunch of scientists, engineers and teachers are upset in regards to the official automobile chosen for this occasion.
Toyota has been a serious sponsor of the Olympics for years, and in Paris, it’s utilizing a fleet of 500 hydrogen fuel-cell-powered Toyota Mirai sedans to shuttle athletes round. However whereas these vehicles do have zero tailpipe emissions, a coalition of 120 scientists from the UK and america have written a letter objecting to their use.
The Mirai mirage
The Toyota Mirai was purported to be the way forward for transportation. With zero tailpipe emissions and the prospect of hydrogen fueling stations spanning no less than so far as conventional gasoline stations, it was the proper resolution. However the revolution by no means got here. With the overwhelming majority of business hydrogen nonetheless coming from fossil fuels, a crumbling infrastructure and plummeting resale values, the Mirai grew to become an undesirable automobile that homeowners are struggling to do away with. And now, scientists need it faraway from the Paris 2024 Olympics record of official autos.
“We’re writing to specific our concern that Toyota’s promotion of a hydrogen automobile is scientifically misaligned with net-zero and can injury the status of the 2024 Video games,” the letter mentioned, as printed by Hydrogen Perception and CNN. “Alternative stays to reroute, and we urge that you just require Toyota to switch the Mirai with a Battery Electrical Automobile because the official Video games automobile.”
The group, which incorporates scientists and engineers from the College of Cambridge, Oxford College and the College of Colorado, mentioned that 96% of the world’s hydrogen continues to be derived from fossil fuels like methane gasoline, making most hydrogen-fueled autos just like the Mirai rather more polluting than pure EVs and solely marginally cleaner than conventional combustion autos.
Toyota Mirai at Hydrogen Pump
Attaining the 2024 Olympics’ bold green-energy objective will contain utilizing huge photovoltaic arrays, buildings that can be utilized after the video games are over, and sure, use of the Mirai sedan. However even fueling hydrogen vehicles is as a lot a problem there as it’s wherever.
To place issues into perspective, there are fewer than 10 hydrogen fueling stations in the entire of Paris–town that hosts this yr’s Olympics. In response to the European Hydrogen Refuelling Stations Availability System, a public-private partnership supporting analysis and innovation actions in hydrogen applied sciences in Europe, there are eight hydrogen stations in Paris, however three are unavailable on the time of writing this text. In response to the European Hydrogen Observatory, that quantity goes down to simply three.
So how does Toyota plan on fueling the five hundred Mirai FCEVs that may ferry athletes and officers by means of France’s capital? With hydrogen derived from water and natural matter generated with renewable sources, the corporate mentioned, in response to CNN.
Presumably that includes some transportable hydrogen stations that may disappear as soon as the Olympics are over, leaving the taxi drivers who will get the keys to the Mirais after the occasion caught with vehicles which might be a logistical nightmare to refuel.
6 Photographs
To their credit score, Toyota and the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games organizers will deploy a fleet of over 2,650 electrified autos, together with 1,150 battery-powered EVs, 500 Mirai FCEVs, 10 hydrogen buses and round 250 battery-powered Accesibile Individuals Movers (APMs.)
Nonetheless, the Mirai has been a constant supply of controversy in recent times, notably within the U.S. Whereas Toyota continues to speculate closely within the fuel-cell expertise it pioneered, homeowners of the Mirai have filed lawsuits and demanded buybacks over the shortage of fueling stations, the extraordinarily excessive value of hydrogen and a normal sense of being deceived by the producer.
Within the U.S., Mirai homeowners had been left scratching their heads after a number of hydrogen stations had been shut down, forcing them to drive dozens of miles to refuel, solely to find that there’s an extended queue or that the station is unavailable, as InsideEVs found after speaking to a number of homeowners of Toyota’s flagship hydrogen sedan. “All the H2 automobile expertise is an experiment that’s failing,” one Mirai proprietor advised InsideEVs earlier this yr. “I did not anticipate to purchase a automobile from Toyota and really feel duped, cheated, and misled.”
