Cars, Trucks, Bikes, Project Cars, DIY, Travel, Adventure, Podcast, Videos
By Jeff Glucker
Feb 26, 2021
The 2021 Toyota Mirai is a good machine with an extremely limited market. It’s a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. And right now there are not a lot of places to fill it up. It’s only available for sale in California, in fact. But if demand for hydrogen rises and supply rises to meet it, Toyota is ready with a well-built sedan. We spent a week with the new Mirai to see what it’s all about…
[Disclaimer: Toyota tossed us the keys to the Mirai and included topped-off hydrogen tanks.]
Jeff Glucker is the co-founder and Executive Editor of Hooniverse.com. He’s often seen getting passed as he hustles a 1991 Mitsubishi Montero up the 405 Freeway. IG: @HooniverseJeff
This is forever promising tech, but there are only four carmakers worldwide still pursuing hydrogen? Great car though, some people here bought the last version (but Hyundai’s hydrogen car was more “popular”, like in the single digits more popular). 18 months ago, a hydrogen station outside Oslo exploded, and since then, hydrogen stations all across the country have been shut down. That has annoyed people paying 60k$ for their water-emitting cars, understandably. Gotta love how the chapter “final rambling thoughts” is a third of the video though. 😛
It was a lot of rambling and I didn’t feel like going through to break up that bit into more sections.
“The brakes are good to go” is perhaps not the most reassuring assessment of a system designed for stopping.
Glickenhouse (sp?) is developing in the fuel cell space. They are planning a Baja run in a fuel cell vehicle, I think.
On the range, my guess is that running exclusively in sport is the culprit. Throttle response in our 2021 Accord Hybrid is dramatically different from sport to eco. I’ve not run it much in sport to understand the impact on economy. It’s my wife’s car and she’s all about the mpg, so it never leaves eco.
My limited understanding is that our current level of -how to put this?- routinely deployable technology does not make hydrogen cars actually viable on any scale beyond demonstration fleets.
This article (below) is rather discouraging, at least to my mind.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/02/are-hydrogen-fuelled-vehicles-a-waste-of-our-time-and-energy/
Long time lurker first time commenter. Love Hooniverse, especially the WRITTEN articles. Can y’all provide some content heavy text with your video reviews for those of us that want to absorb information the old fashioned way? Sorry, but not going to watch your videos. Thanks!
At least they have refined the looks so that it is NOT so eye searingly UGLY!!