In December 2014, Toyota first began selling its Mirai in its home market Japan. This vehicle is considered as the hydrogen-fueled car and a bid to lead the industry in the nascent technology. The giant automaker has promoted fuel cell vehicles as the most rational next-generation option to hybrid cars, despite few hydrogen fuelling stations remains a major difficulty for mass consumption.
Toyota Mirai: The Hydrogen-Fueled Cars
In Japanese, the word “mirai” means “future,” and Toyota believes that Mirai is the future of motoring. This vehicle runs solely on hydrogen fuel and its only emissions are water. The Toyota Mirai were initially sold and leased just in California, where there is an infrastructure for hydrogen fueling. Its mileage is around 300 miles and its refueling will take about five minutes to be full. The powertrain of Toyota Mirai has an eight-year per 100,000-mile warranty to allay early-adopter concerns.
According to Toyota, when you pump hydrogen into the Mirai, the vehicle travels to carbon-fiber that reinforced fuel tanks where it's stored. Then the FCV's front intake grills are letting in the outside air to the fuel cell stack. The hydrogen travels from the tanks to the fuel cell stack and that makes the electricity and a chemical reaction involving the oxygen in the air. When you hit your foot on the gas pedal or the Toyota Mirai, the electricity from the fuel cell stack is sent to the motor or the vehicle. "In the end, the only by-product of creating electricity with hydrogen and oxygen in our fuel cell stack is water, which leaves through the tailpipe," the firm said.
Toyota Is Recalling All Of Its Mirai
As reported by Reuters, Toyota Motor Corp announced on Wednesday that the company is recalling all of the approximately 2,800 zero-emission Mirai cars on the road. This move of Toyota is because of the problems with the vehicle's output voltage generated by their fuel cell system. Toyota explained that under unique driving conditions, there was a possibility that the output voltage of the car will be generated by the fuel cell boost converter and could exceed the maximum voltage.
Toyota unveiled its Mirai model at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2015 and it was also announced that the vehicle would be available for consumer purchase in fall 2015. As of today, Toyota has sold about 2,840 Mirai cars in Japan, in the United States and other markets in Europe and the United Arab Emirates. Oficial dealers of Toyota will update the fuel cell system software at no cost for all the customer. And as Toyota said, this process will take about half an hour only.
