Toyota unveils revamped hydrogen sedan Mirai to take on Tesla; driving range of up to 312 miles on a full tank

Japan’s biggest automaker Toyota is revamping and transforming its Mirai hydrogen sedan car in an attempt to revive the anemic sales, boost demand and take on its competitor, Tesla. Just before the Tokyo Motor Show that starts on October 24, Toyota unveiled Friday a prototype of the redesigned Mirai that boasts longer driving range than its predecessor. The revamped Mirai has an EPA-estimated driving range of up to 312 miles on a full tank. It also comes with 3 years/$15,000 worth of complimentary fuel24.

Powered by hydrogen, Mirai’s only emission is water. It was first unveiled at the November 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show, The Toyota Mirai is a mid-size hydrogen fuel cell car manufactured by Toyota, one of the first such sedan-like vehicles to be sold commercially. Toyota had a global sales of 5,300 Mirais as of December 2017. The top-selling markets were the U.S. with 2,900 units, Japan with 2,100 and Europe with 200.

“We wanted to make a car that people really want to buy, not just because it’s an eco car,” Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of the new Mirai, said at the unveiling.

Toyota began fuel cell development in Japan in the early 1990s and has developed a series of fuel cell vehicles, subjecting them to more than 1,600,000 km (1,000,000 miles) of road testing. Since 2012, fuel cell test vehicles have logged thousands of miles on North American roads.

Between September 2015 and February 2016, one Mirai was driven 100,000 km (62,000 miles) in 107 days on different roads in Hamburg, using just over one tonne of hydrogen. Toyota started testing two Mirai fuel cells in an electric Class 8 semi-trailer truck in the Port of Los Angeles in 2017 as part of Project Portal.