Toyota’s new Mirai FCEV looks better with a longer range.

Toyota

Mirai’s deputy chief engineer Ryotaro Shimizu said the company was looking for a more “emotional design” for the new model. The vertebrae on the nose also have air inlets (fuel cells are needed to breathe) in favor of a huge forward grill. The car is a few inches shorter and wider, and about six inches longer than its predecessor. That space has been used more for legroom and comfort, and to make room for a fifth passenger. Depending on the specification, it comes in a ship with 19-20 or 20-inch wheels, which makes everything look a bit more aggressive and sporty compared to the 17-inch wheels on its predecessor.

Inside, the biggest change from Fancy to the next, the Lexus-Esc interior, is that the primary display is no longer housed in the central console. To drive the first Mirai (and the current Prius, in that case), you needed to look far down the road, to see the GPS display. Now the screen is mounted next to the instrument cluster, and it is angled to favor the driver, which should be made easier to use.

Toyota

The original Mirai had a bit of space between the driver and the passenger on the leg level, but the updated model now has a practically split wall. It is full of cans and has a mobile phone charging plate, but this was mainly replaced to make room below for a long, centrally-kept fuel tank. It should, at the very least, provide plenty of space for dude ads and ephemera that taxi drivers – a big customer for Mirai – prefer to have on hand when they are driving.

Toyota also wants to dispel the notion that the new Mirai uh, Leopard Driving fans as his predecessors often drive the Prius for a sense of connection to his sluggish management and route. The new Mirai has rear-wheel drive, with multi-link suspension, which is a sportier option compared to the front-wheel-drive first model. In addition, centrally mounted hydrogen tanks mean that the car has a lower center of gravity, a tighter body, and, says Toyota, a closer 50:50 weight distribution. Don’t expect it to handle like a race car, but maybe it will take a little less to run a cruise ship.

Toyota

Shimizu added that when you hit the gas pedal, you should feel a “very good kick”, indicating that the acceleration has also been improved. Toyota has added something called “Active Creative Sound Creator” to the driver to understand what is going on with his car, as it is designed for Mirai. Impossibly quiet On its own.

Mirai found it difficult to make room until Toyota could compress the most cumbersome element of the car; Fuel cell. The 114kW unit engine from the first car dominated the bay, occupying 33 liters of space. Toyota boasts that the new model consumes nine liters less on a 24-liter basis, but is 10 percent more efficient, yielding 128kW despite its small size. With being small, its stack has fewer, uh, cells: 330, down 370 in advance.

This allowed Toyota to install a large hydrogen tank running along the floor of the car. It has two small tanks attached, one under the rear seats, and one under the trunk floor. The overall effect is that the fuel capacity has increased from 6.6 kg to .6..6 kg and together with the new fuel cell contributes to a range of 0%.

If you drive sensibly, the new Mirai quote range is about 650 kilometers or 403 miles – enough to cover the distance between Tokyo and Osaka. Of course, the current epidemic means that journalists have yet to test any of these claims in the real world. It will be a while before people can actually drive in this vehicle.

Toyota

Toyota sometimes lets its marketing braggados get better in a few moments and this habit is in full view here. The company describes the new Mirai as a “negative emission” vehicle, as it filters the air passing through the fuel cell. The filtration process can remove up to 100% of the particles that come in contact with sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. As far as Toyota is concerned, this car clears the air it drives, and the on-screen display will also tell you how many adults have done the right thing to breathe while you’re driving.

This is a similar logic that the company uses to describe its petrol-electric hybrid as “self-charging”. On the one hand, yes, this car Charge Their Own There are batteries, but they are obtained primarily by burning carbon-emitted fossil fuels. Similarly, a new Mirai car here has burned carbon in its construction, and is not yet a carbon-neutral fuel until most of the hydrogen is a renewable product. Electric and fuel cell cars – overall – are much cleaner than their gasoline-powered counterparts, but these easily reject semi-true fuel-cell vehicles (or any type of cleaner car) do not benefit.

Toyota

The new Mirai sells about 20 percent less than the first edition. The first model’s sticker cost around, 60,000, so you can expect it to be around $ 50,000 now. But you’ll still need to stay close to the hydrogen station to keep things going, and the U.S. In, it is limited to parts of California and part of Hawaii. Private collectors who want to sit in their garage are not good for the company’s mission to raise awareness and demand for hydrogen cars.

With the exception of a few high-profile individuals and public entities, most of the 11,000 first-generation Mirage were assigned to fleet operators and taxi companies. This is where the power of hydrogen lies: as clean as an EV, but with a refueling time of about five minutes. A number of German taxi companies especially adopted many Miras in their fleet so that their new cars would not sit in the recharge bay for many hours of the day.

Toyota

The first Mirai and its fuel cells were hand-made to order in the same small workshop where the Lexus LFA (its short-lived supercar) was made. Now that Toyota has developed the ability to produce both the car and its cells, the fuel cells now take “seconds” instead of about 15 minutes ago. As a result, the company is targeting a ten-fold increase in worldwide sales. He wants Mirai to be so transformative now that the second-generation Prius was in the first decade of this century.

But the infrastructure to support a car like the Mirai has not yet begun. U.S. In, there are only 45 hydrogen refueling stations: 43 in California, and one in Connecticut and Hawaii. In Germany, there are 87 stations, compared to 1 in the UK, and only four in France. Japan, meanwhile, has about 127 hydrogen stations, but its government says it needs close to 900 nationwide. But for most people, even thinking of buying a hydrogen car is impossible due to lack of infrastructure.

Toyota’s grand plan to replace gasoline with hydrogen has also been acquired with the addition of EVs. The company has essentially handed over the small car market to electric car manufacturers, as you can’t yet build a small enough fuel cell to fit into a city car. And Toyota, despite all its experience in the field, is still reading its first decent series “pure” battery EV. When it comes to hydrogen, Toyota’s focus is on the heavy, long-term car market, as well as trucks and trains. It is here, where the weight and cost of the battery is less problematic, that hydrogen becomes a viable energy source.

Toyota

“Merai” translates to “future” in Japanese and there is some hope that the day of hydrogen will come, probably. U.S. The UK has recently promised to use renewable energy to “produce carbon-free hydrogen at the same cost from shale gas” as part of its clean energy energy employment plan. Has committed to cost up to £ 500 million to produce carbon hydrogen. Japan, meanwhile, has been investing in hydrogen production for the past six years, and expects costs to fall below the point where it no longer needs public subsidies.

But none of this will come in the near future to help Toyota sell 100,000-or-so-Mira, which it plans to produce in the next few years. For that to happen, it needs a massive increase in the number of hydrogen stations and facilities for clean production. Toyota is not releasing hydrogen fuel cells, but it is not clear when the world will be ready for an FCEV like Mirai.