Toyota Mirai Engineer Doubts EVs are Key to a Sustainable Future

Toyota doesn’t think electric vehicles are the way of the future. 

Proponents of EVs claim that if charging infrastructure is improved and charge times are shortened, electric cars are a viable option to replace traditional vehicles, but Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of Toyota’s hydrogen fuel-cell car, the Mirai, disagrees. Tanaka says that fast charging times will actually defeat the purpose of electric cars.

“If you were to charge a car in 12 minutes for a range of 500 km (310 miles), for example, you’re probably using up electricity required to power 1,000 houses,” said Tanaka. “That totally goes against the need to stabilize electricity use on the grid.”

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Tanaka doesn’t completely discredit the idea of electric vehicles, saying that EVs are best used when charged overnight during off-peak hours and then driven short distances during the day. But for a zero-emissions alternative to gasoline, Tanaka believes that hydrogen power is the only way to go.

He points out that hydrogen can be extracted from many different sources, like sewage, a source that one fueling station in southern Japan is already using to fill up to 70 Mirai fuel cell cars a day.

[Source: Automotive News]

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