25 Years of Hybrids, 10 Years of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars – CleanTechnica

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One of our readers passed along the note recently that it was the 25 year anniversary of the first hybrid car in the United States, the Honda Insight, which arrived in December 1999. (Yes, the Toyota Prius came a couple of years earlier in Japan, but it didn’t come to the US market until 2000.)

To be honest, I thought it had been longer. The uplifting thing here to me is that just 25 years later, we are approaching 10% of US sales being fully electric. However, showing how much the US has lagged, the reader who shared this milestone, Rajan Madan, added the following: “In these 25 years, share of hybrids has reached 10%: USA, EU: around 30%, Japan: around 60%.”

The US is behind, and this has become the norm in recent decades. We were behind on hybrids, and now we are well behind on pure electric vehicles compared to China and Europe. There are all kinds of potential reasons for it we could discuss, but the simple fact of the matter is we’re behind and continue to guzzle a lot more gasoline than our peers, thus creating more pollution (perhaps brain-rotting pollution) and more global heating.

In fact, earlier today, also backing up that point, another reader, Larry Evans, shared the following comparison of public EV charge points in the US, Europe, and China from July 2024:

Yikes.

The United States isn’t just a laggard; it’s barely on the chart!

Looking at it from that perspective, though, the US is doing better than one would think it should be when it comes to BEV sales, even if it is still far behind Europe and China. The US reached 8.2% of new car sales being BEVs in 2024, while Europe reached 16% and China reached 25%. However, with much broader EV charging infrastructure and more committed political leaders, we could see Europe and China really run away from us on this matter, and we could see the US take a decade or so longer to fully electrify its auto market.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

Rajan Madan loves to track numbers related to EVs, oil, and more. Aside from the 25-year anniversary of hybrids, the funnier milestone he noticed recently concerns hydrogen fuel cell cars. It was recently the 10-year anniversary of the first hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle on the US market, the Toyota Mirai.

In mid-December, Rajan noted, “Toyota Mirai was launched on this date 10 years ago and it sold 27,455 units with 2 generations: Gen-1: 2015-2019, Gen-2: 2020-2024.”

He added that the number of hydrogen stations in the US have decreased rather than increased since the Mirai was launched.

Rajan added that Toyota had reached 267,564 cumulative BEV sales by that point, versus the aforementioned 27,455 sales of Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell model. At nearly 10 times more BEVs even at the biggest hydrogen fuel cell vehicle promoter in the auto industry, I think it’s safe to say that battery electric vehicles have run away with the title in this formerly massively hyped competition.

Is it even worth highlighting the 10-year anniversary of the Toyota Mirai? Well, it’s worth keeping track of these things and reflecting on progress — or lack thereof — from time to time, and thanks to Rajan for helping with that!