Toyota seems to be gaining lots of traction with its Mirai FCV, especially since they announced to be selling quite a few more than they originally projected. And because of the gaining popularity of the new Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle, Toyota even themselves confirmed to be interested in producing more FCV vehicles.
That said, more details surfaced via AutoCar about what these possible FCV vehicles could be. After speaking with the Mirai’s chief engineer, Yoshikazi Tanaka, the outlet learned Toyota is interested in even going as far as making an entire family of cars based off of the Mirai, similarly to how they created a bunch of new Prius variants to the original five-door model.
Unfortunately, the feasibility of larger hydrogen fuel-cell cars is still hampered by the lack of a supportive infrastructure network, so any additional models to the Mirai’s FCV lineup could be many years away. This is entirely expected since Toyota even took almost 15 years to expand the Prius lineup, despite the fact that hybrid technology has been tried, tested, and proven. Though the reasons for the Prius’ late lineup expansion could be far and more varied than the Mirai’s reasons.
Another major hurdle for the expansion of FCV cars is production since it takes quite a bit of time for Toyota to bang out a few Mirais. As of now, Toyota only plans to increase Mirai production to 3,000 units in 2017 and the only way to boost production, or even move forward with product expansion, is if someone introduced a “breakthrough with how they’re made,” said Tanaka.
– By: Chris Chin
Source: AutoCar
Source: egmCarTech http://bit.ly/1O5FxoL
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