Why Used Toyota Mirais Are So Cheap (And Are They Worth Buying?)

Like other Toyotas, the California-only Toyota Mirai is well-designed and quality-built. The main difference between the Toyota Mirai and other Toyotas is that the Mirai uses hydrogen for fuel. There are pros and cons of hydrogen powered vehicles.

Used Toyota Mirais are really cheap. Recent used Mirai prices (based on the 18 currently available from Longo Toyota, the world's largest Toyota dealer and one of the 11 certified Mirai dealers) show that used Mirai prices range from $9,888 to $17,888. These cars have anywhere from 5,900 to 59,000 miles on them, which is pretty low by today's used-car standards. Keep in mind that these are all Toyota Certified used cars with a 7-year, 100,000-mile warranty – plus a $15,000 hydrogen fuel card to cover your fuel costs. Sounds like a sweet deal, right?

There are three good reasons why a used Toyota Mirai is so cheap – the spotty fueling infrastructure, poor Mirai sales, and the high cost of hydrogen after your fuel card is used up.

My experience with non-ICE vehicles is based on a great deal of time I have spent with several close friends who have owned EVs since as far back as 2013. This time includes driving their EVs, along with long trips taken in those EVs while dealing with the challenges of the early days of the EV charging infrastructure. This experience has taught me that the importance of a charging ecosystem cannot be understated.

Let's start with the current state of hydrogen fueling in California. The Mirai is sold only in California because that's the sole place you can find significant hydrogen infrastructure. Unfortunately, there are only 54 light-duty hydrogen stations currently open in the entire state, with most located in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. Many of those may be offline on any given day, due to insufficient hydrogen supply. The northern part of the state has no stations, there is only one in the center of the state, and San Diego has only two. This makes long-distance travel within the third-largest state problematic.

The next issue is the tiny numbers of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles sold, compared to other zero-emission vehicles in the state. Of over 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles in California, which includes battery electrics (BEVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and fuel-cell vehicles (FCEVs), a miniscule 13,988 are FCEVs. Of those 13,988, 12,272 are Toyota Mirais. To put that into perspective, Toyota Mirais are eight-tenths of one percent of Cali's zero-emissions fleet. This makes it unlikely that hydrogen powered cars will ever surpass battery-electric vehicles.

Finally, there's the high cost of hydrogen to consider, once you run through the $15,000 Toyota fuel card (which won't take long at $200 per fill-up). The current price of hydrogen equates to $14.60 per gallon. Even in California, that's more than three times the cost of gasoline  and another reason hydrogen cars are doomed to fail. It doesn't sound like such a great deal now, does it?