{"id":47120,"date":"2017-01-20T13:49:58","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T13:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.influx.co.uk\/?p=47120"},"modified":"2024-10-08T15:30:40","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T14:30:40","slug":"toyota-mirai-hydrogen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/toyota-mirai-hydrogen\/","title":{"rendered":"Toyota Mirai x Hydrogen: the world’s first mass produced HFCV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the future? It was a clean, uncomplicated place. Things were easy. Things were rendered in primary colours. And everything was great. Toyota can remember the future, too. That\u2019s why they brought us The Mirai – the first mass production Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. <\/strong><\/p>\n

You can blather all you want about the beauty of the internal combustion engine. You can drone on all you like about the untrammelled gorgeousness of the sound of a throbbing V8 engine. Thing is, in the next few decades these things are going to be specialist items of part-time excitement – edge-dwelling guilty pleasures reeking of dinosaur bones.<\/p>\n

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Toyota has had a track record of bringing us particularly sensible versions of the future. When it emerged between 1995 and 1997 the Prius was, visually at least, possibly the dullest car design in the history of car design. But now look at its success. Suddenly, the Prius was everywhere. And even the earliest versions are still out there, doing their job. Moving people. This is the most obvious example of the innovation that\u2019s threaded through the company\u2019s fibre. Often, they have boldly gone where it mightn\u2019t have seemed sensible for a car brand to to go.<\/p>\n

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No one fell in love with the Prius instantly. And not many will swoon for the Mirai, though the design is certainly intriguing. It shares many cues with the latest version of the Prius – but it somehow more extreme. A few years back now we saw a white Mirai on the streets of Tokyo and it stopped us in our tracks. The blue version we spent some time with is more muted – but the sweeping lines and angular edges all whisper of an appropriately striking vision and slippery aero.<\/p>\n

In the cabin (which is very alluring – a bit light an Art Deco cocktail lounge), you feel as if you\u2019re sitting up high – perkily poised rather than leaning like a gangster. As you’d expect there’s an opulent feel and the interface is full of information and ergonomically exact. There\u2019s something appropriately Jetsons-like about the whirring waft you get as you pull away. Push the right foot to the floor and you get the sense of a coil unfolding, propelling you forward with the sustained urgency that you get in any electrically motored vehicle. Anchor up and take a line in a corner and there\u2019s a little front end wash out but not annoyingly so – though the rough Sussex and Surrey country roads we\u2019re on make the chassis rattle a bit.<\/p>\n