Does The Mirai Have The Potential To Unseat The Prius As The King Of Green?

Toyota remains incredibly proud of its green halo car, the Prius. On the company website, it calls the gas-electric car, "The hybrid that started it all." Chances are, if someone tells you to think of a hybrid car today, your first thought is going to be the Prius. Now a cultural icon, the Prius changed a lot of attitudes about what an efficient car is able to achieve.

 But the car is aging, despite numerous refreshes and model tweaks over the years, and sales dropped 11.5 percent last year. It's taken Toyota 25 years of ups and downs to get the Prius to where it is today, and we started wondering if that's too long for the car to remain viable in an era of 40+ mile-per-gallon non-hybrid cars and a plethora of plug-in competitors for the green car crown (we're not the only ones).

 Plus, Toyota is rapidly shifting its green focus away from the Prius and towards the hydrogen-powered Mirai fuel cell car. But if you ask Toyota representatives if the Prius is still a vital car in 2015 – and we did – you'll find that there's still a lot of love for the car that went before.

TheSteve - 2/3/2015 3:24:16 PM

+2 Boost

Will the Mirai become the new Prius? Not while hydrogen filling stations are so few and far between.

By the way, did you know that the total amount of energy we have to put into ambient hydrogen in order to get it into a state that's usable by the Mirai, and then deliver it to the hydrogen filling station, is actually far less efficient (and worse for the planet) than gasoline. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but do your own research into hydrogen extraction and conversion, and dig deeper into where the energy comes from to do that.

atc98092 - 2/3/2015 7:50:01 PM

0 Boost

Exactly what I was going to say. There has to be more than a dozen public fueling stations, and they have to be somewhere other than Southern Cal. They may be the leading edge (maybe), but to unseat the Hybrid it has to work nationwide.

800over - 2/4/2015 10:30:05 AM

+2 Boost

The Steve,

There are many ways to provide Hydrogen for the filling station. NOT all of them are worse for the planet. It depends on the type of energy used. Just like filling up your Plug in hybrid with electricity from a coal plant is not as friendly as electricity from a wind farm the source of the Hydrogen matters. To say that it is worse for the planet is an over simplification. And not factual. "dig deeper" yourself. Do you know where the hydrogen that California will use is from? Either way the Mirai is simply in it's infancy. If it promotes the use of cleaner fuel it is great. I look forward to seeing what comes next.

Car4Life - 2/3/2015 5:21:13 PM

+3 Boost

I wonder how many birds/insects/pets/small children are going to get sucked up into those air dams...environmentally friendly says who?

MDarringer - 2/3/2015 7:13:25 PM

0 Boost

In a word: NOPE. The technology/infrastructure is not yet viable.