What it’s like to drive a hydrogen car

[jamesbond]

What it’s like to drive a hydrogen car
CarBuyer Singapore

A Toyota Mirai hydrogen car would cost more than $300,000 in Singapore. But it isn’t
heavy taxes keeping it from our market…

FUJI SPEEDWAY, JAPAN — Following another Toyota Mirai around the twisty Fuji racing circuit, I get a faceful of nothing more than water, rather than the noxious fumes that a conventional car might belch out.

Back in the pit lane, I bend over at the rear and sure enough, see nothing but pure water dripping out, which is a slightly surreal experience. 

That’s what happens when a car is powered by hydrogen fuel cells. It takes hydrogen gas and ‘burns’ (oxidises) it, to form electricity and H2O. The electricity is then used to power the car, while your conscience is untroubled by the prospect that your trip to the shops is adding to global warming.

Fuel cells may seem like a new thing but Toyota has been researching them for a long time — its first fuel cell concept, the FCEV-1, debuted in 1996, a year before the first production version of the Toyota Prius went on sale.

Though “Mirai” means future, Toyota isn’t treating the car as a far-off dream. The Mirai first appeared in concept form at the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show, and has recently gone into limited production for sale in Japan, the USA and certain regions of Europe.

In Germany it’s priced at 66,000 Euro, about S$101,000. For perspective, the price of two other luxury eco-friendly cars: A BMW i3 is 35,000 Euro, and an i8 is 150,000 Euro.

By the time the tax man here is done with a Mirai, it would cost more than $300,000 with COE.
Perhaps it’s just as well that Singapore isn’t on the list of places where you can buy a Mirai, then. But a lack of hydrogen refuelling stations, and not heavy taxes, is ultimately to blame.

The pity of it is, the Mirai is a lovely car to drive. Like a conventional EV (or Electric Vehicle), it starts up in complete silence. You engage a stubby ‘gear’ shifter and the car begins to move off without noise. Even more so than Toyota’s hybrids, it’s extremely refined, with no engine sounds intruding on the cabin and very little road or wind roar. Even while doing 120km/h on Fuji’s main straight the interior feels almost the same as at 30km/h.

It’s not designed as a sports car, but its drive components are mounted very low in the body, giving it a low centre of gravity. That makes for a very tidy handling vehicle.

Packing a 150bhp motor and 335Nm of torque means it’s very enjoyable to rocket the Mirai out of Fuji’s corners, and entering them hot isn’t the crossed-arms, sphincter-tightening experience one might expect. It’s actually quite hard to get the car out of shape.

While Fuji seems like a billiard-table smooth race track, driving a current Toyota Prius around it shows up imperfections that the Mirai glosses over. Indeed running over the rumble strips on the fuel-cell car shows it deals with ruts at high-speed very well.

Inside, the layout is very Prius-like, with an offset central instrument display and a prominent central console for infotainment and climate control functions. It does feel more well-built and designed though, and the soft touch dashboard is elegantly curved.

But the car’s main appeal lies in the way it is propelled. It’s a seductive idea – a car that’s fun to drive, yet emits nothing but water. It would be practical to run, too. Toyota says refuelling the car takes only three minutes, and it can cover 700km (on Japan’s test cycle, or 500km on the US’s EPA cycle) on one 5kg charge of hydrogen.

Where and how you’d get that fuel is a problem that still needs to be solved, just like it is with EVs. Currently, hydrogen gas can be formed from methane and other fossil fuels (which itself is a polluting process), or from electrolysis (basically splitting water into its components) which is only clean if you use renewable electricity.

Toyota says it’s investigating a way of obtaining hydrogen from young or brown coal in a carbon-neutral manner.

So challenges are still there, but if Toyota is able to put its considerable resources and influence to making hydrogen FCVs like the Mirai a reality, just like it did with hybrid drive and the Prius, then the future of the automobile is looking bright, and clean.
And as my laps at Fuji showed, it will also be fun.

[naruto789544]

cool technology... i do hope they can get hydrogen fuel cleanly from fossils and the likes or else it will just be transferring one problem with another... 

[razorsharp]

nagiisa lang yung nakikita kong shell hyrogen fueling station sa may amin, mga 20km away pa. mukhang matagal pa bago maging common ito.