With so many battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) hitting the market, we wanted to check in with the newest hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), cars that use a hydrogen fuel stack instead of a battery to produce electricity. Have the cars and the infrastructure improved in the five years since we last ran a long-term FCEV? We arranged to spend a year with the freshly redesigned 2021 Toyota Mirai to find out.

I was chosen as the Mirai's custodian because I fit Toyota's customer profile: someone who wants an EV but can't install a charger at home (I live in a listed-landmark apartment complex). Toyota pitches the Mirai as an electric car that is fueled rather than charged, just like a gasoline car and nearly as quickly. I chose a Mirai XLE in Supersonic Red (sadly, the bright Hydro Blue paint is only available on the Limited) and started driving.

Our Mirai clocked up just 13,882 miles during its year with us. Why so few? First, the nation's hydrogen infrastructure is still very small. The vast majority (53) of America's 54 hydrogen stations are in California (the 54th is in Hawaii), and most are clustered around California's most populous regions. With few stations between or beyond, the Mirai is more of a homebody than a long-distance traveler (though I did take it on a road trip). Second, I was still working from home. And third, given the unreliability of the fueling network—more on which shortly—a lot of staffers were understandably reluctant to trust their transportation prospects to hydrogen. So most of the year it was just me and my Mirai, which suited me just fine—I loved the car.

Those who did drive the car were almost universal in their praise, primarily for the Mirai's hushed and refined demeanor, which was my favorite aspect, as well. The Mirai is based on the same platform as the Lexus LS, and it feels more like a Lexus than a Toyota (and having spent much time with Automobile's long-term LS 500, I would know). Believe it or not, this is an area where a lot of EVs get it wrong: With no engine providing a background thrum, road and wind noise can seem disproportionately loud in an electric car. Not so in the Mirai.

One surprising area where the Mirai drew complaints was interior space. It's a big car—as long as a Toyota Avalon and an inch wider—but the occupants share the interior with the hydrogen fuel tanks, the largest of which lives under the broad center console, with the next-biggest under the rear seat. At 5-foot-6, I never found the Mirai particularly cramped, but my 6-foot friends found it awkward to get in and out of. Given the car's exterior size, they were surprised at how tight the interior felt.

For me, the biggest issue was range: Toyota promises 402 miles for the Mirai XLE (357 for the nicer Mirai Limited, which weighs more and has a different wheel/tire combo). Still, even with moderate speeds—my little-old-lady driving habits are one reason I was picked for this assignment—I averaged 331 miles of range per tank (a figure we arrived at by adding the mileage traveled prior to each fill-up to the indicated range remaining). Even allowing for an alleged 20-mile reserve when the range hits 0 (as I was told by other Mirai drivers; I never did work up the nerve to run the car to empty), that's still far below 402.

That's not entirely the Mirai's fault, because the hydrogen fuel stations we used didn't always deliver a full tank (since hydrogen is a gas, the fuel level is determined by pressure; you can't top off as you can with liquid fuel), which dragged down the average. Still, in the 72 times we fueled up the Mirai during our year-long loan, there were only three occasions when we left the station with the trip computer showing 350 miles of range or better, with a best-ever fill of 359. Using our aforementioned formula to calculate actual range, our best tank yielded 374 miles.

Efficiency was the issue here. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, like EVs, are rated by the EPA in mpg-e, an acronym for miles per gallon-equivalent (equating the energy content with that of a gallon of gasoline). The Mirai is rated at 76/71/74 mpg-e city/highway/combined, but even with my relaxed driving style, our Mirai averaged just 67.8 mpg-e, with a best-ever tank of 77 mpg-e. When other staffers drove the car, they averaged mid-50s to mid-60s. I found that in situations where a gasoline car would use more fuel, such as steep hills or fast curvy-road driving, the Mirai used a lot more fuel. Still, the new car proved more efficient than our first-gen Mirai, which averaged 62.0 mpg-e with us—a notable improvement considering the new Mirai is longer, wider, heavier, and quicker than the old one.

Of course, all this would be less of an issue if the hydrogen fueling infrastructure was a little more developed. There were 40-something stations in the country when we took delivery of the 2021 Mirai, which increased to 54 by the end of our loan. Our loan coincided with a gaggle of new stations being opened by a company called True Zero, something we took as a promising sign. It wasn't.

I've documented the issues we faced in earlier updates (this one chronicles the low point, which I referred to as the Hydrogen Fuelpocalypse). Suffice it to say that station reliability was the biggest pain point in our time with the Mirai. For the first few months, we found that if one station went down, cars would flock to nearby stations, and they in turn would run out of fuel or drop from the strain of constant use. We saw days when half of the stations in California—and thus the country—were out of commission.

As mentioned earlier, even working stations didn't always give us a full tank—one-third of our fueling stops failed to give us a full tank. Sometimes we'd try a second (and often a third) time to fill the car; other times we simply left with only 7/8ths of a tank. Hydrogen is dispensed at ridiculously cold temperatures, and the fueling hose would sometimes freeze to the car's filler nozzle, the cure being to wait a couple of minutes and then give it a healthy yank. (This is a slight improvement over our first Mirai, where it wasn't the nozzle that froze, it was our fingers.)

We asked True Zero what was going on, and its spokesperson blamed the timing: Just as the company was opening new stations and upgrading others, Toyota introduced the new Mirai while Hyundai started selling its own hydrogen-powered car, the Nexo. This caused an increase in demand for fuel that the company just wasn't expecting. True Zero was quick to remind us that hydrogen fueling is still a technology under development and that getting the universe's smallest molecule to move where you want it is nowhere near as simple as pumping gasoline.

Over our year with the Mirai, we saw significant improvements in both station reliability and capacity. True Zero introduced a new nozzle less susceptible to freezing and tripled the capacity of many of its stations. For the last three months of our loan, I rarely encountered stations that were out of fuel. When I first got the Mirai, I'd start looking for fuel when the range dropped to 100-150 miles; by the end of the year, I felt comfortable running down to 50 miles or fewer before fueling up.

What about the small number of fuel stations? That wasn't as much of a detriment for me as I expected. I found plenty of stations on the routes I normally traveled: three on the way to or near the office, two near my favorite photography store, one near the model train club where I spend most Saturdays, and one near the ranch where my wife boards her horse. When I got the Mirai, the closest station was a 10-minute drive from home; halfway through our loan, another station opened up just a couple miles away and near my favorite grocery store. Except for times when nearby stations were broken, I rarely had to wait in line.

I settled into a routine: When the range hit 100 miles or so, I'd start thinking about when my plans for the next couple of days would intersect with a fuel station. This usually worked just fine, but I did set a mileage threshold below which it was time to implement Plan B, a Shell station 30 miles away, which was fed by a pipeline and never ran out of hydrogen. There were probably five occasions when all the local stations were on the fritz and I had to drive to that Shell—and one occasion when my range was too low to get there, I had to park the Mirai and drive something else until the local stations were back online.

That said, there was one upside to fueling: Although hydrogen prices varied wildly, they were stable. Hydrogen is dispensed by the kilogram, and it takes 5.5 kg to fill the 2021 Mirai's tank. The stations we visited charged anywhere from $13.14 to $18.69 per kg, but those prices never seemed to change, not even when gasoline prices skyrocketed in 2022. Filling up from a quarter tank generally cost between $45 and $50.

Over the year, we put $2,996.37 worth of hydrogen into the Mirai. That averages out to about 21.7 cents per mile, less than the 25.8 cents per mile of our 2016 Mirai. Part of that comes down to location: My local stations were cheaper than those farther south where Buyer's Guide editor Kelly Lin lived with the first-gen Mirai. I paid an average of $14.60 per kg, but even if I had fueled exclusively at the pipeline-connected station at $15.99/kg, my average would have been 23.8 cents per mile, still cheaper than the '16.

How do the costs compare to a gasoline car? Our 2020 Hyundai Sonata, for example, used $2,746.91 worth of gasoline in its 17,000 miles with us. We got that car before gas prices spiked, paying an average of $3.89 per gallon, so fueling the Sonata cost us 16.1 center per mile.

But the Mirai still cost us less, because we didn't actually pay for any of that hydrogen out of our own pocket. Just like in 2016, every new Mirai comes with a $15,000 prepaid fuel card that works at all hydrogen stations. Given our driving patterns, it'd be five years before Toyota stopped paying for fuel and we started. (The card is good for six years if you buy a Mirai but only three if you lease.) I've read some articles predicting that hydrogen costs could drop considerably in the next five years; still, for now, that's just speculation.

What about maintenance? Only a handful of Toyota dealerships sell and service FCEVs, and finding a list is nearly impossible. One Toyota dealership listed the Mirai on its service page and actually let us book an appointment—then called us the day before to tell us they didn't actually service Mirais.

I prefer to try different dealerships, but I wound up at Santa Monica Toyota for the Mirai's 5,000- and 10,000-mile services, which consist primarily of inspections and tire rotation. As they were with our 2016 Mirai, costs were covered under Toyota's three-year complimentary service plan. Our only out-of-pocket cost was a new driver's side wiper blade at $14.99. (We asked for two, but the dealership didn't have the right-side blade in stock. They promised to call when it arrived but never did.) Incidentally, back when we had the 2016 Mirai, the service department used to ask us about our fueling experiences. That didn't happen with our 2021; I'm guessing Toyota has heard enough negative feedback that it knows not to ask.

So how does our latest trip on the hydrogen highway compare to our first? No question, the Toyota Mirai is greatly improved, particularly in the areas of looks (was that old Mirai an ugly duckling or what?), but also in terms of luxury and chassis dynamics. Everyone who drove our Mirai agreed it was a lovely car… at least when it had full hydrogen tanks.

Does the hydrogen-powered car have a future? I personally think it does, though perhaps not as a passenger car. Even with a mature fueling infrastructure, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles would still face the cramped-interior problem, since those big tanks need to go somewhere. The rapid refueling of a hydrogen car certainly beats the pants off state-of-the-art BEV charging, though I expect we'll see rapid advances in battery technology that will change that equation.

Where hydrogen may have a brighter future is heavy trucks. Think about the size of battery it would take to move an 80,000-pound truck a thousand miles—and the extra battery capacity you'd need to carry the weight of the battery itself. Hydrogen tanks and a fuel cell stack for a truck are significantly smaller and lighter, and such trucks can refuel almost as quickly as a diesel truck.

Then again, fuel cell trucking would require a nationwide network of fuel stations, which would solve our biggest problem with the Toyota Mirai—and that would make life with this very pleasant car infinitely more pleasant.