The world is waiting for a decent hydrogen car, and the 2021 Mirai is Toyota’s latest attempt to get the H2 revolution underway. Essentially a giant futuristic sedan that only emits water vapor, the 2nd generation Mirai takes only 5 minutes to fill up for 650 kilometers of range.
Hey guys welcome to rev today we have something rather special for you the all-new second generation toyota mirai one of the latest electric cars and one of the very few hydrogen cars and when it comes to range and fast refueling nothing can beat it says toyota so let’s check it out so is this the future of electric cars if you want to you can let your car pee on
The streets design wise things have drastically changed in the second generation as you can see for yourself and definitely for the better if you ask me nothing really reminds you of the well kind of ugly looking spaceship the mirai was before now we’ve got this nice looking front the two split led headlights not sure if i like those maybe one single unit would
Have looked better but in the side profile you’ve got this nice looking almost coupe like roof line and then at the back here this led strip that goes all the way around i really like the design kind of reminds me of i don’t know maybe kia stinger meets audi a7 sport spec plus bmw 8 series grand coupe looks nice despite the new sporty looks toyota managed to
Lower the base price for their almost 5 meter long hydrogen flagship down to under 64 000 euros in here you’ve got pretty much all the space you could ask for very roomy and comfy and the leather seats well they feel very nice i like it you’ve got a nice big center console where you can put your arm to rest and while in the first generation the interior looked
A tad too futuristic if you ask me in here you have got a more classic layout got a nice screen behind the steering wheel and a big touchscreen plus a separate climate control all you could ask for let’s check out the back well at the back you can already see things are not so spacious anymore i mean i’m only one meter 70 so i can fit pretty much anywhere but
If you are bigger than you are let’s say average japanese engineer then well i mean legroom is fine but headroom there could be a little bit more you can feel in here that the engineers they needed some of this space for all the electronics and the tanks at the back especially here in this center tunnel you can see how huge and massive that is so although toyota
Says that is a five-seater i don’t really see five adults sitting in here but what’s pretty nice is if you look at the armrest you’ve got this little control center here so when you’re sitting here you can control the temperature change the tracks and well if you’re not too big have a quite good time back here well let’s check out the trunk then and just as
With the back seat the same can be said here it’s not the most spacious 450 liters capacity could be better but okay it is what it is because the engineers also here needed the space for the electronics and the three tanks so driving the mirai pretty much feels like driving any other electric car you get in turn the car on and off you go there is no need to
Adjust to anything because at the end of the day the mirai is just another electric car only difference being it doesn’t store the electricity it needs in a big battery but instead it produces the energy it needs while driving in the fuel cell now although the second generation will give you 182 horsepower the car is by no means a sports car so you don’t need to
Expect acceleration times of like a tesla or a porsche tycoon 0 to 100 kilometers per hour takes around 9.2 seconds and the top speed is limited to 175 kilometers per hour so those numbers are comparable to those of the first generation but still this one feels different you could say it’s a little bit more refined i would say whereas in the first generation you
Could really hear some pumps and compressors working this one is really silent the only thing you sometimes can hear is maybe a little hissing sound coming from the fuel cell in the front but i mean as soon as you turn on the radio you won’t even notice that and if you combine these silence in here together with the little stiffer body work and the almost 50 50
Weight ratio well all that makes up for pretty chill and relaxing right no toyota didn’t just change the design they wanted bigger range and more power and for that they needed more space so that’s why the car compared to the first generation is so much bigger now the tech back then was just as revolutionary as it is today you’ve got your fuel cell you’ve got an
Electric engine the fuel cell gets fed with hydrogen and air produces energy that will make the electric engine spin and off you go at the end the only thing that’s left as emission is water which is pretty nice now toyota changed the whole layout of the engine and the tanks the electric engine now sits at the rear of the car so we’ve got rear wheel drive on
Top of that they improved the fuel cell which now sits at the front of the car plus we’ve now got three instead of two hydrogen fuel tanks that also sit at the rear of the car and together they will pack 5.6 kilograms of hydrogen fuel and that is enough to reach ranges of up to 650 kilometers which is quite a lot before we had 500 but i mean compared to battery
Electric vehicles there aren’t that many that can go that far now the real strength about hydrogen cars is no question refueling because while with battery electric cars you oftentimes have to wait hours or at least 45 30 minutes at the supercharger to keep on going here you just take the hydrogen pistol just like in your normal combustion car put it on wait
For five minutes the whole thing is done you can go for another 650 kilometers pretty nice nowadays of course one problem and that is the amount of hydrogen fuel stations now today there are more than the 14 hydrogen fuel stations from 2015 right now about 100 but i mean come on 100 stations in the whole of the whole of germany compared to the thousands or 10 000
Petrol stations that’s peanuts now the distribution of those 100 hydrogen stations is quite okay so in germany you pretty much can go anywhere but to get to the next station you will have to drive for some time as it won’t be right around the corner the original expansion plan in germany envisioned 400 hydrogen refueling stations by 2023 however due to the slow
Pace of expansion it’s doubtful this target can be reached in the next two years one reason is certainly the low demand due to few newly registered fuel cell cars the new mirai could be the hydrogen car that leads to a breakthrough so as i said the nice thing about hydrogen is long ranges fast refueling and no emissions well besides water and normally the mirai
Will get rid of it by emitting water vapor but if you want to you can quite literally let your car pee on the streets and that by just pressing this button which is obviously quite nice if you want to avoid having bigger puddles in your garage another nice detail can be found inside the infotainment screen as i said for the fuel cell to work it needs hydrogen
And air that is coming from the front of the car and now because during the process the air will get filtered it will get out of the exhaust after the process even cleaner than when it entered which is crazy when you think about and you can even see that inside the infotainment screen so basically while driving the car you will clean the air around you which is
Well nice i guess so to sum it up is this the future of electric cars well i don’t really know but the mirai certainly shows that you don’t need bigger and bigger batteries to reach higher ranges and when it comes to fast recharging or in this case refueling times when we are talking about electric cars nothing really beats hydrogen now would i buy a mirai
Well certainly yes if i often had to drive long distances and don’t want to spend my time waiting for the car to recharge now if i only needed the car for short commutes well maybe then a smaller car with a smaller battery might be the better choice now why wouldn’t i buy a mirai well probably because i need a lot of space in the trunk and still there aren’t
That many hydrogen fuel stations in germany but hopefully that will change in the future the ugly duckling has become a beautiful swan and the second generation mirai has just about everything it takes to help fuel cells make a breakthrough what’s missing are more hydrogen filling stations and hydrogen produced from renewable sources for it to become a true zero emissions vehicle
Transcribed from video
Toyota Mirai Review 2021: Hydrogen Breakthrough Car? By DW REV – Cars \u0026 Mobility