Bay Area hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle owners part of a lawsuit against Toyota

A group of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle owners is suing the maker, claiming that the cars have become virtually worthless as they struggle to get fuel.

It's called the Mirai, the Japanese word for "future." Toyota debuted the car in 2016 when there were only about 20 refueling stations in the state, and, at the time, a Toyota spokesperson admitted that it was a problem.

"We made the car, and now we just need a few more stations to make it work," said Product Training Specialist Jay Turmell at an introductory event in San Francisco.

But now, almost 10 years later, there still aren't many stations around. Malcolm Boehme waited at a broken pump in Mill Valley, the only hydrogen filling station in all of Marin County.

"I'm stuck. I can't drive my car home because then I won't make it back to the gas station," he said. "I'm literally stuck here."

The Mirai is marketed as an emission-free vehicle, but the hydrogen is created by burning natural gas, so it is not a carbon-free technology. But it is the lack of fuel availability that has prompted 700 Mirai owners to sue Toyota.

"About 15,000 people bought this car," said Attorney Jason Ingber. "They were sold over a period of about nine years, and the stations have progressively nose-dived to the point where there is no fuel in San Francisco. You have to cross a bridge or go to another county to get fuel. So people are not using the car, and if you don't use the car for seven days, the battery dies."

Ingber filed the lawsuit on the owners' behalf. He said he advised his clients to stop paying on their cars when he got a letter from a Toyota attorney promising that no action would be taken if they did. But he said since then, many have been plagued with phone calls and messages from collection agencies, with damaging results to their credit scores. 

"And at the end of the day, the mechanical defects of the car prevent people from using it, the lack of fuel prevents people from using it," he said. "And people are left holding this $50,000 paper weight in their driveway that Toyota knows they can't use, and are now being harshly debt collected on, and credit reported on, and in some cases even repo'd on."

Zachary Sherry wishes he hadn't paid cash for his used 2021 Mirai. He said he is lucky that he lives fairly close to the Mill Valley filling station, but he believes that he's now stuck with a car that most people will never want.

"It's just frustrating," said Sherry. "It's like, OK, what am I going to do with this car after I get rid of it?  There's no market.  Nobody is going to repair it.  It has an actual expiration date on it, when you can't refuel it."

Sherry's Mirai has a date printed on the fuel door that states, "DO NOT REFUEL AFTER 2036."  

He's joined the lawsuit as a way to get Toyota to take responsibility for the Mirai's it continues to sell.

"I'm not looking for any huge payout or anything.  It's just, the vehicle's totally worthless," he said. "At the end of the day, I'll take anything. Because I'm going to wind up having to dispose of the vehicle."

CBS News Bay Area reached out to Toyota for comment about the lawsuit, but have so far gotten no response.