Just received invitation to test drive Mirai

Don't feel too bad for the car. I've had to do that myself .... one too many Pepsi's
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Is there even a hydrogen station near by ?!? We're not too far from one but they never so much as sent us an email.
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good luck with that.

 

I would love to hear what your thoughts were while you were doing the test drive.

 

Pick the wrong road that could take 2 hours. I'm guessing you are going down 280 toward palo alto, it probably will be a pleasant drive.

 

I didn't go to this event (nor driven a Mirai) since I didn't really want to spend the time on a car where it's highly unlikely I will lease or buy... But, I have driven a few hydrogen FCEVs before, well before Mirai was announced at Alt Car Expo in Santa Monica, several years ago. They included FCEVs Honda FCX Clarity, Mercedes B-Class FCV, Nissan X-Trail FCV, Toyota Highlander FCV and a Kia (probably not Hyundai) SUV FCV.

I recall some of them do make loud whirring sounds when floored. The ride along person said it was the pumps.

As for CVRP and being out of funds... someone else I know (not well but he's on the BMW ActiveE FB group) went to the same venue that you did and mentioned that the event was staffed by a public relations firm. He said essentially that his "guess" (for lack of a better word) is that to be an employee, you had to qualified for to be to be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Darn! I should've gone then. It sounded like the knowledge level of these folks weren't that high since they gave him misinformation like the battery being 30 kWh! No way!

As for jammed panels or whatever... that's nothing compared to the much more expensive Tesla Model X w/all sorts of fit and finish problems besides problems w/both the front doors and falcon wing doors (e.g. won't stay shut or won't open).

As for battery... well, AFAIK, they're used as a buffer and at minimum to a place regen into.

There is a hydrogen fueling station just down the street from my work. I've seen a Mirai there fueling when I passed but I was with someone and couldn't stop to watch or talk to the driver.

 

There is a compressor for the air supply to the stack. Hyundai managed to do away with it for the Santa Fe FCEV.

But this is a Toyota.

 

While it was on the MFD, the battery gauge was more obvious than the fuel gauge in the gen2. Don't have any driver seat time in the newer Toyota hybrids, but I say this could simply be a case of reusing the dash design from them.

 

The Mirai is a FCEV not a FCV. All it needs is a plug and a larger battery to make sense/cents. Use clean/locally produced electricity for the majority of day to day driving and H2 for trips. But that's more complexity and costs added to an all ready expensive and complex vehicle.

 

FCV and FCEV are synonyms.

The presence of a battery or not isn't what makes a fuel cell car an electric one. It is because their drive train is electric, just like any EV's. The fuel cell itself isn't that different from a battery in basic principles either. Both have an anode, cathode, and electrolyte, and they both produce electricity through a chemical reaction. We won't see a commercial FCEV without a battery for the same reason we done have cars powered by Sterling engines; the power out ramp up and down is too slow to meet modern driving needs.

A plug in FCEV could aid the adoption of hydrogen FCEVs by decreasing the burden of saturated expansion of the infrastructure. Without a plug, you need enough hydrogen stations to make it convenient for the early adopters. Which means more than what can support themselves economically. With a plug, less stations are needed. In addition to cost, space needs to be found for the larger battery. The hydrogen tanks already take up a fair amount of real estate.