Toyota Mirai Wins 2016 What Car? Technology Award

WOW ! ! POPULAR ! ! IE toyota unloaded 5 of these coal burners on europeans;

First five Toyota Mirai fuel cell vehicles arrive in Europe

and maybe some day it'll be a whopping 50 cars ... unless 50 is more of Toyota's puffery going on. According to this article - even if they CAN unload 50 cars - it may take 2 years - until 2017;

Toyota: 90% of the Mirai sold in Europe comes from UK and Germany | Magneti Marelli

With claims of HUGE success, it'll be no surprise - no matter what the next story is
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I like the link when I clicked it from the OP.
Order a Mirai from Toyota Right Now | The News Wheel

I can only assume they mean "popular" ironically. But they gave them the award? I'm confused whether "what car?" is being ironic in the award, or simply in the term popular.

 

Apparently Toyota knows what they are doing, along with the new 2016 Prius, Toyota will be the number one in world wide sales for 2016.......

 

I am not a cheerleader for the mega corp. I don't think churing out the most cars is really a prize whether it is gm, or toyota, or vw. Those are the big three that trade the title. VW if not for the diesel scandal, probably resulting for the drive to be biggest, would be biggest in 2016.

My comment is solely on the ironic use of the word popular for a vehcile that only delivered 72 in the US and 10 in europe. Numbers are not out for japan yet, but perhaps they leased 618 mainly to government or business fleets. It doesn't seem popular at all compaed to say the million or so corrolas they sell every year, or even a niche car like the tesla model S that sold 50,000 world wide.

Since this is prius chat, I hope the gen IV prius recovers sales. 2015 was not a good year in the US, Japan, or anywhere in the world for it, but it was really due for a redesign. It did sell much better than any other hybrid.

 

So 72 is "popular", but tens of thousands is "nobody is knocking on our door asking for plugin vehicles"?

 

Toyota would rather be the greatest car company in the world then the largest. But they are the largest and even so, continue to build some of the best and most reliable cars in the industry. When Lexus launches their Hydrogen vehicle in 2020, the rest of the EV industry will feel the impact.

 

Well then lets not pretend being the largest is really a prize for doing good. It is a prize for being big, which often hurts product.

We will see in 2020. My bet would be it ships less than 1000 in 2020 if it is ready at all. There will not be much infrastructure in the world for hydrogen in 2020.

Since toyota says total shipments of fcv in 2020 will be 30,000 for the corporation, and Tesla already sold 50,000 model S's, its difficult to see how the Lexus would blow away the tesla, bmw, audi, and mercedes plug-ins unless batteries become larger or more expensive than we think they are this year.

I wish toyota luck in fuel cells in 2025. Then at least there may be some stations beyond small tests.

 

Tesla and Nissan are the only relevant EV players at this time. Mercedes, BMW and VW are just trying to stay relavent with EV

 

BMW sold 11k i3's in 2015 out of 346k BMW's sold, or a little over 3% of total sales. Prius hatchback was a little over 5% of Toyota US sales. So not sure by what measure BMW is "not relevant".
Fun thought experiment: what percentage of Toyotas sold will the Mirai be in 2016? Toyota sold 2mil cars in the US in 2015, so I'm expecting around 60k Mirai sold, as anything else would mean that they are not "relevant players" by your own terminology, right?

 

Hydrogen is not relevant at this time, so no the Mirai is not relevant. When BMW sells 346K cars and only 11K are I3's, this is a drop in the bucket, so it is not relevant.

Nissan sold 90K Leafs in 2015. That is relevant,,,,,

Prius hatch is not an EV.

 

Being #1 is great . . . but it didn't stop GM from making the Aztek .... or the Hummer ... or the Vega .... or the Prowler or the SSR .... no need to drive that point home any further

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I just remarked that they used popular ironically. No fight here. Pretty worthless linked article.

This is a european award. My guess is european hydrogen will be made from imported fossil fuel as is the plan for japanese hydrogen. You should drop that bullet point unless you are only talking the US.

I don't clean is a good point either. That is poorly defined.

Poor graph for the mirai, as out of 2 pieces of information one is missing. I'm sure you can post a better chart where the mirai numbers are known. I'm still missing what is a milestone of the mirai that the clarity didn't do.

 

Then Toyota is the only relevant hybrid players, and the rest are just trying to stay relevant. Yet the others being there keeps Toyota from getting complacent.

 

Ah, was talking about 2020, the timeline for a hydrogen lexus flagship, versus plug-ins not just bevs.

On this timeline audi says it thinks about 40% of sports sedans will be plug-in by 2030, and it plans on being a player. We can look at the a3 phev as a first step. BMW and mercedes also will be big players in electrification in 2020, they have the same research as audi. Nissan/infiniti doesn't do well in that market so I don't really count them. SO mercedes, bmw, audi, and tesla against a lexus fcv, with what maybe 100 hydrogen fueling stations in the US and 300 in europe. Lexus doesn't stand a chance in europe or the US.

It may in Japan which is closed to these other cars, but toyota only expects 12,000 fcv in japan in 2020. No it will not be a player. Again maybe with more r&d and infrastructure in 2025, 9 years from now, but not in 5. In 5 years it will be a big so what.

 

Another day, another puff piece.

 

It is entertaining. sad. but entertaining.

 

Last year at the DC car show, Toyota was stressing here the Mirai could be used to power the house. At the moment that aspect suddenly sounds attractive with a big snow storm approaching.

The UCS plot is nutty without Prius on there. I have really given up on UCS as a political mouthpiece but I'd like to know where they stand on the fuel cell political battle, before I totally give up on them.