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HYDROGEN TAKES ON THE HARD CELL

TOYOTA IS A BIG believer in hydrogen fuel cell cars, and we’ve driven the car to prove it – the second generation Mirai. This zero-emissions electric car produces its electricity onboard by mixing hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell stack, with only water and heat produced as waste.

Mirai embodies Toyota’s kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement. Compared with the first-generation Mirai from 2014, the fuel cell stack is smaller but more powerful, range has increased to 650km, and the vehicle is transformed from freaky Prius cousin to svelte Lexus clone.

Toyota only produced 11,000 firstgen cars and was coy about the list price, but then you couldn’t really buy one; only a few were brought into Australia, leased to fleets on a trial basis. Toyota plans to bring 20 of the new model to Australia when it launches globally during 2021, priced about 20 percent lower than before.

For that, you can also thank kaizen. A fuel cell used to take 15 minutes to manufacture; now one can be completed in a matter of seconds. The filament-winding process that makes high-pressure hydrogen tanks robust and minimises leaks (hydrogen is abundant but incredibly tiny so prone to escape) has also been cut by a third. And economies of scale have blossomed, tenfold, to 30,000 a year.