Toyota
has big plans for the upcoming years, that plan is that at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics,
they will release their new version of its hydrogen-powered Mirai. This
underscores Toyota’s commitment to move towards alternative fuel technologies.
“The 2020 Olympics
could be the venue to showcase the new Mirai to the world,”
Kiyotaka Ise, head of
Advanced R&D at Toyota
Toyota
is the world’s top selling carmaker, and this month disclosed their ambitions
to join and surpass Tesla and Nissan in the battle to build long-range
battery-powered cars. And they are hoping to replicate with Mirai, the same
success they had with the Prius, their award winning gasoline-electric hybrid. The
Prius cemented Toyota as a pioneer in fuel-saving technology.
The
Toyota Mirai was first released in 2014 and powered by two high-pressure hydrogen
tanks and an electric motor. And the best part is that the Mirai emits only
water. Currently the Mirai is only available stateside in California. Despite
having the underlying Electric Vehicle technology from its development of plug-in
hybrids, Toyota, along with Honda, has long been cautious about electric cars,
citing limits to range, refuelling time and battery technology.
The company has set a target to
sell more than 30,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles annually worldwide by about
2020, 10 times its 2017 production target. It also plans to introduce more than
100 fuel-cell buses in the Tokyo area ahead of the Olympics. The
second-generation Prius hybrid, released in 2003, sold about 1.2m vehicles
compared with less than 150,000 vehicles for the first Prius, which came out in
1997.
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