The Japanese car maker has already revealed much about its upcoming hydrogen powered car that has been named as Toyota Mirai. Previously known as the FCV, it was showcased in parts over last few months. While the exteriors were unmasked at the LA motor show, its interiors and specs were brought forth at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show.
The latest green car from Toyota is a standalone 5-door, 4-passenger hatchback bestowed with a luggage space of 360-litres. Other worth-mentioning specs include a rear parking camera, LED headlights, satellite navigation, climate control, and hand-made leather upholstery. The safety front is embedded with regular standard features like adaptive cruise control, lane-change assist, lane-departure warning, and pre-crash system.
Being one of the most fuel efficient cars, Toyota Mirai registered a rapid rise that has compelled its maker to roll out more units in coming years. Statically, Toyota will be producing more than 700 units next year and around 2000 next year to that and 3000 in the year after that. The increment was made post its super successful sales in Japanese market where Toyota received around 1500 orders within first month of its launch.
Mirai is a proud culmination of two decades of hard work put in by Toyota’s research team. The retail version of this green car bears a capacity to cover a range of 300 miles (approx.500km) via 2 high-pressure hydrogen tanks placed beneath the floor. The tanks basically charge up the fuel cells that then power a electric motor that propels front set of wheels. The emitted products from this process include only water vapor from the exhaust pipe. The total power output from this system is assumed to be somewhere around 135bhp. The total time taken for refilling of these tanks is around 3 minutes.
Toyota wishes to pioneer this technology on the global level in the same way it popularized hybrid technology in last one and a half decade. The name “Mirai” is a Japanese word for ”future”. Though, there have been some serious remarks over this technology in US as some people reported that hydrogen gas for this purpose is being derived from “steam reforming” methane gas.
Toyota Mirai is definitely a turning point in the history of automobile world which will witness a four-passenger vehicle travelling 300miles with a single fill. It may decades before any other technology will pass the benchmark set by this vehicle in terms of fuel economy. Whether this car will join the fleet of Toyota cars in India is yet unknown since Indian market will take some time to get ready for green cars.
