Hyperdrive
Toyota Bets On a Hydrogen Future With New Fuel-Cell Car
- New Mirai FCV comes with longer range and better looks
- Touted as step forward in Japan’s push for carbon-neutrality
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Toyota Motor Corp. unveiled a sleeker and longer-traveling version of Mirai, its hydrogen-powered car, but what it’s targeting isn’t sales. The automaker sees the futuristic vehicle as a bridge to a difficult-to-realize future society that runs on hydrogen.
Toyota’s release of the world’s first mass-produced hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle (FCV) in 2014 was a leap in technology -- the Mirai takes in hydrogen gas, charges in under five minutes and travels as far as a gasoline car while only emitting water vapor. Yet over the past six years, only about 11,000 of the cars have been sold in a market growing increasingly crowded with battery-electric vehicles.