Marc StickleyIt’s Driving Jim…… But Not as we Know it……
Our resident driver takes a spin in a car of the future, available today. But the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Hybrid powered Toyota Mirai (that’s Japanese for Future) is not without some drawbacks…
Review by Marc Stickley
The Mirai is Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell hybrid, available now, but you’ll probably only want one if a) you’re super eco-conscious; b) you live near to one of the three hydrogen refuelling pumps in the UK; or c) if you can run it as a company car, or a car for your company. You could get one and pop it in the garage for a time when the infrastructure catches up enough for you to use it as you would a normal car, but at £61,000 after the Government’s OLEV grant, the Mirai is not cheap, so what’s all the fuss about?
In short, it’s all about the geeky stuff beneath the Mirai’s unconventional (some might say gawky) looking body - incidentally the geeky stuff has just won the Mirai the accolade of World Green Car 2016. In a bid to move away from reliance on fossil fuels - which we all know won’t last forever - one of the leading suggested alternatives has been hydrogen fuel cells. It’s taken Toyota 20 years to produce a production viable car and at the moment the cells only make a car as clean as the method of hydrogen production used, but with the Mirai, the future is here. Driving a hydrogen cell powered car produces nothing but clean water. That’s got to better than driving around in an existing petrol or diesel and probably a more realistic option than the current crop of electric cars - the only polluting you’ll be doing is at the front end of the energy production, not both ends as with a petrol or diesel car and most other hybrids.
The hydrogen power cell works by producing electricity through the transference of electrons around a special filter. The other by-product of this transference is water, with the electricity being used to charge the same sort of hybrid architecture as found in Toyota’s most synonymous hybrid, the Prius. So in short, hydrogen leaves a pressurised tank, passes through a filter in a fuel cell, producing water and electricity. The water moves to a tank and the electricity is stored in a battery to drive an electric motor. Geeky tech stuff done, what’s it like to drive?
Well, I think perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay Toyota here is that the Mirai feels pretty normal. The Mirai is easy to drive and aside from being eerily quiet (you hear more from the tyres and a little wind noise, but nothing engine related), there’s not a lot to let on that you’re piloting the car of tomorrow. It has a continuous single gear mated to the electric engine, so you get instant torque from the motors, but at 9.6 seconds to 62mph it’s not lightning quick away from the line and won’t be worrying any hot hatches. You can blame the single speed for that, but really, who does the traffic light drag race anyway? What does feel unusual is the way the Mirai leaps forward on the move - 30-50 and 50-70 are dispatched pretty quickly thanks to that wodge of instant torque. It feels a little like there was a delay pulling back a catapult, then a slight hiss and you’re travelling 20mph faster. It’s quite a big car (nearly 5m long - that’s BMW 7 series and SUV territory), but easy to move around town and has enough creature comforts to keep you comfortable while you do it. It also has the usual raft of modern safety features, including blind spot warning mechanisms (in case you’ve silently crept up on other traffic without them or you realising).
What I would say is that for a car of this price point, it doesn’t feel that special inside. I suspect that Toyota have realised - in a similar way to Tesla with their Model S - that ground breaking tech does not come cheap, so the way to ensure you don’t break the bank with each model sold, is to pitch it at the luxury end of the market. The Mirai gives you four individual seats (heated and leather), rather than two up front and a bench in the back. So far, so limo. It has a futuristic dash and centre console, with only a few buttons. The navigation and menu system work well, but the whole deal is neat rather than astonishing. Calling something a luxury sedan does not make it so automatically and the cabin materials are a little disappointing - the leather may be real, but doesn’t feel it. The door trims look like carbon, but are probably plastic and the dash is swathed in a squishy plastic that feels like a cheap briefcase. In all it feels underwhelming and if it were mine, I’d be hoping the money I spent all went on the tech. There’s room in the boot for stuff (361 litres is about family hatch sized), so you can take four adults places, or a family with their gubbins. But then you’re back to range…
Toyota say that the Mirai will go as far as an equivalent petrol-engined car and I’d buy that - the test route I drove saw the range drop by the distance covered, not plummet the second I investigated any performance credentials. But here’s a minor rub - in that equivalent petrol car (and I’ll come back to ‘equivalent’), you can stop anywhere for petrol. You know you can, you’re spoilt for choice. In the Mirai you had better be in or near Heathrow, Hendon or Swindon at the end of your 300 mile drive, or have circled around those points to not face an embarrassing roadside assistance call…”yeah, my car of the future’s run out of hydrogen. Do your recovery vans carry a 700bar refuelling tank?”
So here’s where I am with the Mirai - it does look gawky at first, but after a while, that recedes to merely different. It stands out from the crowd, but in a Prius-when-it-was-launched way, not an orange Lamborghini way. It’s quiet, comfortable and drives like a normal car, with perhaps more real world urge than you might expect. It’s big enough to be a family car, a business car or a plush taxi. But it costs a lot. So for equivalence, we’re talking BMW 7 series, Mercedes S Class or for a green alternative, Tesla money - luxury limos. Or, you get a cabin that feels like it could be in a standard family car and performance to match - probably a two-litre family saloon, mid-range trim, normal performance, about twenty grand’s worth. So you don’t quite get the best of both worlds - if you pay premium money, you expect a premium interior and probably premium performance.
Now to be an early adopter, driving the cleanest car on the block, you might pay that price. However, the next problem would be the infrastructure - getting to the hydrogen pump. Right now there are three and there’ll be seven by mid-2016. Toyota argue (and I’m with them) that by launching the Mirai, they’re getting the hydrogen ball rolling. The infrastructure must follow and by allowing others access to their open-architecture design (less for the clever fuel stack), other manufacturers will want to play catch up. But for me, the Mirai makes more sense for businesses making a statement, or environmentally conscious private-hire firms (taxi/limo service).
The lease option doesn’t seem so bad - £750 per month including maintenance, tyres and fuel (to a £200/month value). As the hydrogen would cost about £50 to fill the tank, that gives four tanks, so about 1200 miles. If you’re in London and can break out to Hendon or Heathrow once a month, or near Swindon, then this could work for you. But, I reckon you could lease a BMW 535i saloon for about £480/mth, a diesel 530d for about £550/mth, or even the new 5 ActiveHybrid for about £530/mth - the obvious limo 7 series was out of reach for this money, including fuel. At a pessimistic 30mpg for each of these, you’d get 1340 miles from three 70 litre tanks of unleaded or diesel at about £75 a tank at current prices making £225…so about the same value, if not with the Mirai’s green credentials. If you shopped around, you could probably get cheaper, or maybe opt for something more lowly. You could plant a tree with the money you save to offset your carbon footprint…
But here’s why I think some will pay that price up front, or on lease for the Mirai and not the typical luxury saloon - they’ll be the greenest driver around, probably greenest in the whole town and making changes to help save the planet is worth it, isn’t it? And to the naysayers? Press the H2O purge button on the dash, unleash that stored water and put out their bonfires… 
Enquiries: Toyota/ https://www.toyota.co.uk/new-cars/new-mirai/