On the edge of a quieter city in the lower North Island, a technology that turns hydrogen into motion — and emits only water — has found its first foothold outside Auckland. Toyota's introduction of the Mirai to Palmerston North's rental market is less a commercial launch than a philosophical proposition: that the infrastructure of tomorrow must be built somewhere, and that somewhere must begin small. It is an invitation, modest in scale but deliberate in intent, for New Zealanders to sit inside the future for a day or two and decide what they think of it.