[RahulNagaraj]

The Toyota Mirai recently set the Guinness World Record for the longest distance travelled by a hydrogen fuel cell EV.



The Toyota Mirai managed to clock 1,360 km (845 miles) on a single tank of hydrogen. The world record attempt took two days to complete and took place in Southern California, USA. The FCEV was driven by professional hypermiler Wayne Gerdes with Bob Winger as his co-pilot.

The duo covered 761 km on the first day, starting from the Toyota Technical Centre (TTC), California, going all the way to Santa Barbara via San Ysidro. The car also visited places like Santa Monica and Malibu beach before returning to the TTC at the end of the day.

Day 2, the Mirai covered 600 km in the morning and afternoon traffic of San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange County, before coasting back to the TTC with the remaining hydrogen.

Combining the results of both days, the Toyota Mirai clocked 845 miles in total from 5.45 kg of hydrogen, translating an impressive fuel efficiency of 152 MPGe. The Toyota Mirai also did not stop for any refuelling for the record attempt.

Link to Team-BHP news

[ADI7YAK]

The biggest gripe I have with hydrogen fuel is that it cannot be filled up at home. It's like CNG where one has to fill the tank up at a fuelling station. Filling Hydrogen also costs way more than charging a car's battery. Cool for long haul commerical vehicles but not very viable for cars I believe.

[sramanat]

What these type of headlines miss is a ready reckoner to compare against other fuels/cars. Mind boggles with too many questions -
1. If not for the professional hypermiler, how much distance could it have gone? i.e., what if a midlife person running errands had driven it?
2. What is the equivalent of 152 MPGe in plain vanilla mpg? Is that respectable? i.e., if one were to spend the equivalent of driving a Corolla for 100 miles in compressing 1kg Hydrogen to fuel the car, does it make sense? In other words, why use a new unit like MPGe. Why not quote it in mpg equivalent?

A google search for point 2 takes me to a DoE report from 2009. The report talks in kWh. I can google and find the equivalent in petrol liters, but this is something that engineers at Toyota should be able to do in under a minute. Why aren't they reporting in those lines? What am I missing? Or, more importantly, what are they hiding

[gkveda]

If topping up time for the hydrogen fuel is within 5-10 mins, this can become potential future for vehicles. It is as dangerous as, or even more as compared with petrol, so enough precautions and standards are required to safeguard the safety aspects.

I somehow am more convinced with this technology as compared to EV technology although there is no enough evidence to prove which one is better and convenient

[Shresth_EV]

Originally Posted by gkveda

If topping up time for the hydrogen fuel is within 5-10 mins, this can become potential future for vehicles. It is as dangerous as, or even more as compared with petrol, so enough precautions and standards are required to safeguard the safety aspects.

I somehow am more convinced with this technology as compared to EV technology although there is no enough evidence to prove which one is better and convenient

Different issues plague FCEVs and BEVs. BEVs have their own downsides, but FCEVs aren’t all that ideal from small vehicle perspective considering need for large tanks. Mirai does EPA range of 600km on 120L tanks. That’s about 3x larger tanks than avg small car (like Nexon or Brezza)

That’s the volume of tanks alone — before even counting the intermediate battery, motor, BMS and Fuel cell stack. Overall, not very space efficient.

Weight plagues batteries making less than ideal for commercial use. H2 makes lot of sense for trains, trucks and ships, but batteries can do the job for city bus, small cargo vans and cars.

It’s not a “this vs that” problem, but about using each tech to its strength.

I’m not sure if people would complain about extra 70kg weight in Nexon EV, but they’ll sure do, if their trunk space is taken up by H2 tanks for giving same range as petrol. Mirai, a full size sedan, has lesser trunk space than the Model 3, a sedan one segment smaller. (See Doug Demuro on Mirai’21)

Battery tech can be researched further but energy density of hydrogen is something permanent in nature — you can’t change amount of energy extracted per litre of H2, but you can surely increase energy capacity per kg in a battery — allowing reduction in weight and increase in range.

[GTO]

I could also change the title to:

Travels 1360 km & still didn't come across a hydrogen filling station!!

Nice to see Toyota's stubbornness with hydrogen, but the big money + entire industry + customer mindset has moved to EVs. Plus, the basic infrastructure to set up EV chargers is ready (i.e. electricity supply even in villages) and lest we forget, EVs can be charged where you park the car overnight.

FCEVs do make sense for larger vehicles though, including trucks, buses, ships etc.

[joybhowmik]

Originally Posted by GTO

Nice to see Toyota's stubbornness with hydrogen,

I think this is more to do with their inability to move away from ICE technology. They have fine-tuned ICE technology to the holy grail (if there's such a thing) in all its aspects : design, manufacture, supply chain, plant & machinery , material science - even the development of engine oils.

Perhaps it's harder to let go, when the degree of entrenchment is very high.