Test Drive and Review: Toyota Mirai Fuel Cell Vehicle
cazalea
On a nice sunny Friday morning, Mrs. Cazalea and I headed for Tustin Toyota to take a long-awaited test drive in a real production Toyota Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Powered Mirai.
Regular readers of this site may remember my report from the LA Auto Show about 18 months ago, when Toyota unveiled the car (literally):
This is one vehicle where YOU DO NOT WANT TO GET IN A FRONT-END COLLISION!
Well 18 months of real time has passed (real time, not TV cooking show time) and the Mirai is for sale. Only 8 dealerships currently deliver Mirai vehicles, and the closest to us is Tustin. They have sold about 60 in the last 9 months. I got on the waiting list last January, and a few weeks ago my name rose to the top. So we hopped in the Volvo and headed North.
Tustin Toyota is a HUGE dealership, fully recycling, generating their own energy with solar, the only LEED dealership around in SoCal, if you know what that means. Despite the green credentials, it’s a large space with a low ceiling, apparently randomly sprinkled with cars, desks, televisions and waiting customers. There’s a Subway Sandwich shop inside along with a Parts & Accessories counter.
I guess this is the new wave of auto retailing, but frankly these huge malls leave me feeling cold, and resentful that I am paying for all this infrastructure.
Just outside the showroom was a mock-up of a hydrogen “fuel pump” so the sales people can explain how it works. Essentially you just plug it on and wait 5 minutes while the car, the pump and your credit card have a 3-way conversation. BTW - a purchase or lease of the Mirai currently includes a pre-loaded credit card with $15,000 worth of hydrogen fuel credit! Despite the inclusion of this prepaid fuel, our Mirai specialist sales lady April said some customers refuse to fill up at a station near their home or work, preferring to drive miles down the road to another station to save “a few bucks”. Since a fill of hydrogen is currently about $70-90, I’d say it’s worth the trip too. But they expect the $15,000 will last about 60,000 miles, so in the long run … who cares?
Shortly after we got bored looking at the pump, April drove up in a white production car, releasing it from its under-the-roof storage bay.
I don’t know. Is this the face that a Dad could love?
The under-hood shot is suitably modern and mysterious. It looks like any other modern car. In essence, this is the electric half of the hybrid powertrain used in the Lexus RX350h or Camry. The difference comes in the device that generates the electricity. As you probably know, the Fuel Cell takes compressed hydrogen gas and converts it to electrical energy - the only “emissions” is water. And quite a bit of it too. A couple gallons a mile. In fact, the dash has an H2O button which releases the surplus water when you press it. Otherwise it collects in a tank, so you don’t have multiple gallons of water running out on your garage floor after a long drive. You can back over the flowerbed and water them as you wish instead!
There are plenty of odd angles and details on this car for you to examine, should you find it in your driveway.
Frankly, I find it a bit homely rather than beautiful or even attractive.
I tried the back seat and found it a comfortable place for people of reasonable size. Two caveats -
1. It’s a 4-seater only, with a large storage console between the seats, so you can’t slide from one side to the other, and
2. There’s a structural brace or bulkhead under the front seats so anyone with size 11 or greater shoes is going to be irritated by lack of toe room.
The front seats are comfortable as well. However, again I can raise two points for discussion:
1. The seats (and overall interior) are two-tone, but the color differential is so slight as to be nearly unnoticeable. Blue and black? Really?
2. The seats are made of “Vegan Leather” which okay, will pacify the clientele but it doesn’t feel, look or smell like leather, so what is the point? Why not call it Naugahyde?
[SofTex is a synthetic leather material that has been designed to be easier to clean and resistant to spills and stains. This new Toyota material is soft to the touch and weighs half as much as genuine full-grain leather and reflects the sun to reduce the "ouch" in the summer months. It is also more environmentally friendly than real leather...]
So in summary, the interior is comfortable, but not luxurious. When I asked April if she considered it a luxury car, she said
“Well, it has all the safety features as our luxury cars. It has two power seats, which is unheard of in a regular Toyota. It has 36 month warranty, service and roadside assistance like our Lexus and no options. It's fully loaded, so Yes, it’s a luxury car."
Hmm. This $60k Toyota doesn’t feel half as luxurious as either my Volvo ($40k new) or Jaguar ($65k new). OK, due to the Fuel Cell technology, each Mirai is probably costing them about $200-250,000 to produce, but couldn't it have been just a little nicer inside? It doesn’t look luxury when you open the door.
As befitting a new-tech car, it’s got a stylish dashboard and lots of graphics on the screen. Personally, and your taste may vary, I found it disconcertingly asymmetrical. The start button is “falling off” the dash, for one thing. The dash surfaces are swooping this way and that. The data up underneath the windshield is so far away I couldn’t read the time or symbols while driving (and yes, I do have new glasses).
My final gripe comes with the controls. No knobs to speak of. Just lots of slider thingies that you touch or tap or rub to activate. Then (as seen above) the graphics to illustrate airflow are so stylishly done that they require study to convey any meaning. Setting the fan speed is a pain. And shades of a runaway Chrysler, to put it in gear you pull the stick to the left, push forward to go backwards, and pull backwards to go forwards. You can’t pull it to the right to park (I tried); instead you push a separate button on the dash.
Before you dismiss me as an old dog who can’t learn new tricks - I learned this Citroen Visa dash and actually started to like it (after awhile). But it isn’t beautiful either and it was a cheap car. I think the Mirai wants to be elegant, but it's really a medium-price car with frosting.
So Griping aside, let’s go for a ride.
Surprise!
It drives like a Prius.
Perhaps quieter, but with a weird hum when the fuel stack is trying to catch up with the driver’s heavy foot. No unusual things to worry about other than the flashing lights signifying blind spot intruders. I was surprised at how weak the powertrain was - trust me boys, you wouldn’t want to rob a bank with it. And with ~ 150 horses pulling ~ 4600 lbs (including us) it’s no wonder. We drove the usual 5-6 mile loop with no collisions, squealing tires or fuss. No nasty hills, either, to overwhelm the drivetrain.
Depressing the power button was a depressing experience, as I noticed no noticeable difference. But still, driving the car alone might produce a more nimble effect.
Back at the ranch, we talked about colors. White, black, blue, silver. Only one interior, which you have seen. No other options, at all.
Here’s the sticker, with all the sales information. To briefly recap, you can buy it with 0% financing, or lease it. You get scads of money back in rebates, tax credits, fuel credit, and can drive in the car pool lane.
However. The car goes 310 miles on a tank of fuel. The nearest station to me is 70 miles away. On the map below, green means open, yellow means “soon” and orange means “we are pumping, but not to the public."
Due to lots of accidents and weird people driving to Comic-Con, the traffic was brutal. So we took a different route - and it was a long hot fast ride home going across the 91 to the 15 and down to San Diego. But we found our 200 hp gasoline-powered turbo Volvo capable not only of 80 mph in 108º F, but willing to do it for 101,000 miles while averaging better than 22.5 mpg US.
(PS - the missus took this photo).
I hope you enjoyed the ride.
Cazalea
Cazalea
This message has been edited by cazalea on 2016-07-22 18:58:02
Comments:
InHavenPro July 22nd, 2016-18:22
Interesting stuff.... I kept noticing them on the roads in the past few months since they first began deliveries and unsurprisingly it did not leave me terribly impressed. It would appear from your writing that you were not particularly impressed either. Granted, it is their f...
cazalea July 22nd, 2016-18:42
Well, Fuel Cell Vehicles are "new" in one sense But the manufacturers like Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, etc have been working on them for decades. The trouble is they have too many constraints right now. They have to meet safety standards while hauling around two tanks of 10,000 psi hydrogen. The...
InHavenPro July 22nd, 2016-23:41
Would definitely be curious.... to read your impressions after having used the car for a while. Ironically, I was watching a little bit of TV tonight and this ad came on.... Toyota Mirai Ad
Bill July 23rd, 2016-02:36
Thanks for another great review. The car does seem a little on the ugly side but maybe one can get used to it. I find the prius super ugly but they sell like hot cakes. Enjoy the weekend. Ps i love the citroen dash console. Looks like a spaceship.
MTF July 23rd, 2016-05:24
You have to use half a tank of fuel for return trip to the gas (literally) station? I got my Casio calculator out to work out that it takes 140 miles journey round trip to fill a 310 mile capacity. You are left with 240 miles when you get home but need to reserve 70 miles for the next run to the gas station. Thus your usable range is 170...
TheMadDruid July 23rd, 2016-05:56
Maybe you can get a job at the Hydrogen Gas Station?!
cazalea July 23rd, 2016-11:35
Yes, that's why I need to wait until the station opens 10 miles from home which is in-between my favorite local watch boutiques. Alternatively, my wife's father who we are visiting 2-3 times a month lives near 3 stations in Torrance - one of them offers FREE hydrogen - so we could fuel up there. But it still doesn't make sense ...
KMII July 23rd, 2016-06:02
Thanks for this! It seems that the product will still need a while to be a practicable solution for many people. The driving like a Prius may not wow us enthusiasts but it shows that the technology is ripe for mass use - if you have a gas station nearby. Still very intere...
redcorals July 23rd, 2016-06:50
Kudos for the innovative effort to Toyota... ...there are so many aspects and prospects of this development but here are few of my own initial considerations. I am not sure of the clean energy production/utilization/wastage ratios with the comparables that being the most important reason to sway awa...
cazalea July 23rd, 2016-07:43
More Mirai Information: Technology The sales lady gave me a handful of brochures, which I failed to include in my previous article. Can we take a quick look now instead? If the thought of fuel cell vehicles, gives you a headache, you'd better stop now. If instead you feel like this, then p...
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amanico
22d of September 2012 / 22d of September 2015: 3 years behind the P 1800 steering wheel.
amanico
Yes, already three years, since the first day I drove my P 1800 back from Amsterdam: To this day. Three years of trips, work, holidays, good moments, and also some small issues, but nothing compared to the pleasure this Volvo gave me, or should I say, gave US, as this was, is and will certainly be a family project. Three years, and 27 000 Kilometers done. A mega road trip to Italy, Slovenia and Croatia.