Most manufacturers nowadays either already have a battery electric vehicle on sale or are preparing to launch one in the near future. Toyota is not one of them and it's odd because it was the automaker that made the hybrid commercially viable and a sales success.

But now it's falling behind other automakers since instead of investing in battery-powered EVs, it's banking solely on fuel cell EV tech. And while FCVs do have a lot of potential and several advantages over BEVs, their high cost and lack of hydrogen fueling stations in most parts of the world renders them highly impractical.

In spite of all this, Toyota persists in its ambition to sell FCVs instead of BEVs because so far it's yet to announce the launch of any of the latter. When it comes to FCVs, though, the Japanese manufacturer is looking to launch its second generation Mirai purely as a fuel cell vehicle; it will probably debut in late 2020, early 2021.

It does sell one fully-electric vehicle, the Lexus UX300e, but it doesn't plan on making a more affordable Toyota version of it. And according to a recent report published on Automotive News, the manufacturer is now teaming up with no fewer than five different Chinese companies to jointly develop FCV.