Toyota to roll out first hydrogen fuel cell car, Mirai
27 Feb 2015
The Toyota Mirai will take to the streets this week. The Jpanese car maker this week started production of its first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, the Mirai, which would have a starting price of $57,500.
The Mirai, among the first mass-market cars to use hydrogen fuel cells, converts compressed hydrogen gas to electricity.
The affordable, eco-friendly sedan, as the company describes its "future car," can be driven for 300 miles and takes about three minutes to charge.
With its 300 miles range, the Mirai beats the current crop of electric cars in the market.
According to Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors, pioneer of electric cars, the concept of hydrogen car was "extremely silly," as hydrogen was an "incredibly dumb" energy source.
Toyota disagreed as it already has a proven track record with fuel-efficient cars like the Prius hybrid.
Also Toyota and its home country of Japan have been heavily investing in what they called the world's "hydrogen era."
The Mirai would be produced in small batches, with only 700 built this year for the US, Europe and Japan, but production would be ramped up to 2,000 starting next year.
The selling price would be about $45,000 in the US, including about $13,000 in federal and California incentives.
The sedan, being produced at the Motomachi Plant in Toyota City, Japan, is like a gasoline-powered car at the fuel pump where drivers could attach a pressurised hose and fill the car's carbon-fibre fuel tanks in about five minutes.
Against this, an all-electric Tesla Model S using the company's "Superchargers" required at least 20 minutes to achieve a half-charged battery.
A full charge will provided a range of up to 265 miles, Toyota said.
The Toyota Mirai, a four-door, mid-size sedan performs to the level of traditional internal combustion engines, except its exhaust emits only water vapour.
The Mirai which is capable of accelerating from 0-60 mph in 9.0 seconds, Toyota said.
Toyota's proprietary fuel cell stack delivers 3.1 kilowatts of electricity per liter of fuel and the electric-powered engine is capable of producing 153hp and 247 foot-pounds of torque.
