Toyota’s new Mirai FCEV is more beautiful, with a longer range.

Toyota

Ryotaro Shimizu, deputy chief engineer at Mirai, said the company is looking for a more “emotional” design for the new model. No more eccentric vertical air intakes on the nose (necessary for the fuel cell to breathe) in favor of a massive front grille. The car is a few inches shorter and wider, and almost six inches longer than its predecessor. Most of that space has been used for better legroom and comfort, and to make room for a fifth passenger. Depending on the spec, it comes with 19 or 20 inch wheels, which makes everything look a bit more aggressive and sporty compared to the 17 inch wheels of its predecessor.

Inside, the biggest change beyond Lexus’ more chic interior is that the main screen is no longer housed in the center console. Driving the first Mirai (and the current Prius, for that matter), you had to look too far, out of the road, to see the GPS display. Now the screen is mounted next to the instrument cluster and it’s tilted to favor the driver, which should make it a lot easier to use.

Toyota

There was a bit of free space between the driver and passenger at the leg level in the original Mirai, but in the updated model there is now practically a dividing wall. It’s stocked with bins and a cell phone charging plate, but this has been mostly modified to make room below for the longer, central fuel tank. That should at least provide plenty of space for the doodads and mayflies that cab drivers – a big Mirai customer – like to keep on hand while they drive.

Toyota also wants to dispel the idea that the new Mirai will behave like, uh, graciously like its predecessor. Driving enthusiasts often criticize the Prius for its sluggish handling and feeling of being disconnected from the road. The new Mirai has rear-wheel drive, with multi-link suspension, a sportier option compared to the first front-wheel drive model. Plus, the mid-mounted hydrogen tanks mean the car has a lower center of gravity, a stiffer body, and, according to Toyota, a weight distribution close to 50:50. Don’t expect it to behave like a race car, but maybe it will be a little less like driving a cruise ship.

Toyota

Shimizu added that when you step on the accelerator pedal, you should feel a “really good kick”, suggesting that the acceleration has also been improved. Toyota also added something called “Active Sound Creator,” a built-in fake engine noise to help the driver understand what’s going on with their car, as the Mirai was designed to be unbelievably silent alone.

Making the Mirai more spacious would have been difficult unless Toyota could reduce the bulkier element of the car; the fuel cell. The 114 kW unit of the first car occupied 33 liters of space, dominating the engine compartment. Toyota boasts that the new model consumes nine liters less, at 24 liters, but is 10% more efficient, producing 128 kW despite its smaller size. In addition to being smaller, it has fewer cells in its stack: 330, compared to 370 previously.

This allowed Toyota to install the larger hydrogen tank, which runs along the floor of the car. It is joined by two smaller tanks, one under the rear seats and one under the trunk floor. The overall effect is that the fuel capacity has increased from 4.6 kg to 5.6 kg and, combined with the new fuel cell, contributes to a 30% increase in range.

If you drive sensibly, the new Mirai’s cited range is around 650 km, or 403 miles – enough to cover the distance between Tokyo and Osaka. Of course, the current pandemic means journalists cannot yet test any of these claims in the real world. It may be some time before people can actually drive in this vehicle.

Toyota

Toyota sometimes lets its marketing boast get the better of it a few times and that habit is clearly visible here. The company describes the new Mirai as a “negative emission” vehicle because it filters the air as it passes through the fuel cell. The filtration process can remove up to 100% of the particles, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide with which it comes in contact. As for Toyota, this car cleans the air it travels through and the on-screen display will even tell you how many adults are breathing while you are driving.

It’s the same kind of biased logic the company uses to describe its gasoline-electric hybrids as “self-charging.” On the one hand, yes, these cars charge their own batteries, but this is done primarily by burning carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Likewise here, a new Mirai car has burned carbon in its construction, and until the majority of hydrogen is produced with renewables, it is not yet a carbon neutral fuel. Electric and fuel cell cars are – on the whole – much cleaner than their gasoline-powered counterparts, but these easily demountable half-truths do no favor with fuel cell vehicles (or any type of cleaner car. ).

Toyota

The new Mirai will cost around 20% less than the first edition. The sticker price for the first model was around $ 60,000, so you can expect it to drop to around $ 50,000 now. But you’ll still need to live close enough to a hydrogen station for the device to work, and in the US that’s limited to parts of California and part of Hawaii. Private collectors who want one in their garage are not good for the company’s mission of raising awareness and demand for hydrogen cars.

Apart from a few prominent individuals and public bodies, the majority of the 11,000 first-generation Mirais were sold to fleet operators and taxi companies. This is where the advantages of hydrogen lie: just as clean as an EV, but with a refueling time of around five minutes. A number of German taxi companies have adopted several Mirais in their fleets specifically to ensure that their new cars will not sit in charging bays for several hours a day.

Toyota

The first Mirai and its fuel cells were handcrafted to order in the same small workshop where Lexus’ LFA (his short-lived supercar) was made. Now Toyota has developed the ability to mass produce both the car and its cells, with fuel cells now taking “seconds” to build, rather than around 15 minutes previously. As a result, the company is targeting a tenfold increase in global sales. He wants the Mirai to be as transformational now as the second-generation Prius was in the first decade of this century.

But the infrastructure to support cars like Mirai has yet to be put in place. In the United States, there are only 45 hydrogen refueling stations: 43 in California and one in Connecticut and Hawaii, respectively. In Germany there are 87 stations, while the UK has 13 and France has only four. Japan, meanwhile, has around 127 hydrogen stations, but its government has said it will need more than 900 across the country. But for most people, even thinking about buying a hydrogen car is an impossibility given the lack of infrastructure.

Toyota’s grand plan to replace gasoline with hydrogen has also been usurped by the rise of EVs. The company has essentially ceded the small car market to electric car makers because you can’t yet make a fuel cell small enough to fit in a city car. And Toyota, despite all its experience in the field, is still preparing its first range of “pure” battery EVs. When it comes to hydrogen, Toyota appears to be focusing on the heavier, longer-range car market, as well as trucks and trains. It is here, where the weight and price of batteries are less of an issue, that hydrogen becomes a viable energy source.

Toyota

“Mirai” in Japanese translates to “future” and there is some hope that the day of hydrogen may be upon us. In the United States, President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to use renewable energy to “produce carbon-free hydrogen at the same cost as shale gas” as part of his energy jobs plan clean. The UK recently pledged to spend up to £ 500million to produce up to 5 GW of low carbon hydrogen for ‘industry, transport, power and homes’ . Japan, meanwhile, has been investing in hydrogen production for six years and expects the cost to fall below the point where it no longer needs government subsidies.

But none of this will happen in time to help Toyota sell the roughly 100,000 Mirais it plans to produce over the next few years. For this to happen, there has to be a massive growth in the number of hydrogen stations and facilities to produce it cleanly. Toyota isn’t giving up on hydrogen fuel cells, but it’s unclear when the world will be ready enough for FCEVs like the Mirai.