James May properly drives his new car for the first time

it's my new car the new fuel cell toyota mirai they're going to drive my new car for the very first time situation reports so far on the all-new toyota mirai it's very very pleasant up to eight miles an hour i'm thinking of giving up are you happy with giving up waiting for a better day right finally we are on the roads of west sussex it stops raining it's still grey but i'm not worried about that and the first thing i want to say about my new car this is unusual it has no smell it has no smell whatsoever not new car smell not old car smell not leather not plastic not manufacturing juices in the same way that sometimes your bed has no temperature you're not conscious of being either hot or cold this car has no smell it's also incredibly quiet as you'd expect of a hydrogen electric car you can hear a bit of tyre noise but not as much as you got in the old car it's lovely it's what car makers have striven for for many many decades rolls royce for example making a silent car the answer was put an electric motor in it drive it with a fuel cell the ride is slightly firmer than it was in the old mirror the mirai actually had quite an old-fashioned feel to it it was slightly floaty slightly rolly in the bends this one is more composed slightly firmer but still sophisticated so it's a nice ride i'm enjoying it i'm enjoying my new car immensely finally i did 40 miles an hour just now 40. i'm amazed we didn't suffocate [Applause] compared with the old car i have a much more comprehensive display or set of displays well the big screen here which has the sat nav and some other stuff and g jaws i'll show you those a bit later on plus i have the display in the middle which shows obviously speed and so on how much hydrogen i've got i can toggle through things like my eco score which has gone down to 77 very poor out of 100 i can look at my history i can look at energy use and so on i can have some of that up on there at least all sorts of stuff the car has an air purification system it cleans the air before it goes into the fuel cell system and if i put up the air purification screen here and expand it you will see that i am collecting joggers you see the joggers i've got two joggers today i've earned 10 previously they're not really there they're figurative joggers but what it's telling me is how many times i've cleaned enough air for one person to breathe for a day the car is actually making the environment better as it drives along if i drive along behind a stinky old diesel bus or something like that i'm actually improving that car's emissions it's a service to the community and you can thank me later why people get so worked up about having analog dials in cars is beyond me because with this electronic display i can just i can change it you can have so much stuff on it it's the equivalent of having 20 or 30 instruments in an old cast much better and it glows in lovely colors and i just love it look at all that look at all that stuff and and i have a head up display in the windscreen there currently showing me direction my speed what the speed limit is here i can also have stuff about the lane following system up if i want it and if i program something in the nav the directions come up on the screen just before it's time to do something like turn left beautiful indicator noise really nice like my grandmother's clock that used to sit on the mantelpiece of her fireplace we're gonna get another jogger in a minute it's fantastic when one pops up i've got one man and one woman so far i reckon i'll get another woman next it's probably best not to be distracted by that sort of thing and what caused the accident exactly mr mate i was just waiting for my jogger to appear in a moment i'm going to do what we always used to do in car review films on the television and stop at a convenient place by the side of the road and walk around the stationary car telling you things about it here we go the mirai is now a bigger car it's also rear-wheel drive the fuel tank is bigger up from five kilograms to 5.6 kilograms which is i think a 12 increase most interestingly it's not actually that interesting but it's interesting if you're a fuel cell bore like i am the fuel cell stack which is now here under the bonnet where an engine would normally be is lighter more compact smaller and yet more powerful up by around 30 bhp in normal car terms and the membranes that make up the fuel cell stack now take three seconds each to make they used to take 15 minutes each to make and for that reason and various other reasons this car the top of the range one obviously costs 65 000 pounds but the old mirai the single spec no options first generation mirai cost 66 000 pounds so i hope other car manufacturers are taking note of this the car improves in every way imaginable and the price comes down like comment subscribe there you go that saved it [Music] i want to say it again i probably have said it already but i do like the ride in this car i think it's it's tremendous it's very important to me ride ride quality just a slight nuggetiness there absolutely smashing this is a very very civilized very agreeable car i said exactly that about the old one this is even better and even though it's got murder wheels on it at 20 inches which i was worried would spoil everything no i was wrong the ride is still good lucy brown is in the passenger seat do you think the ride is good i think it's lovely it is lovely isn't it right here's something that i hadn't had on a car before i'm going to put it in sport mode so i wouldn't do this normally because it's very profligate waste hydrogen i'm now going to press the asc button and we will get an artificial noise so is that an engine noise it's making i don't know that it is it's more of a more of a spaceship sort of noise yes i've done that i'm now turning it off forever because the whole point of an electric car is that it's quiet but i'm taking it out of sport mode because it's as my mother would say unnecessary the big question is the one that i'm sure lots of you are asking right now is hydrogen safe yes it is you see the hydrogen fuel cell car works perfectly it's worked perfectly since the 90s when i first drove one a vauxhall the only problem i know i keep going on about this but the problem is the infrastructure which is not really something toyota or honda or hyundai can control there aren't enough hydrogen filling stations yet to make this a viable only car it would be in germany it would be in japan in britain at the moment there are only three hydrogen fuel stations open there are only 10 anyway but a lot of them are closed because of covid spare parts stuck in the suis canal i don't know the one nearest to my house is at cobham in south london on the m25 which is sort of where i'm heading now with 182 miles of range left that's plenty it's about 60 miles away from here 60 or 70 miles but you do have to think about it but apart from that this is simply a very lovely car and it has to be said the previous mirai that i had that felt like you were taking part in a beta r d experiment it did have that feel about it this is simply a nice car it's it's a nice car at a nice car price it's simply lovely i just can't fill it up with hydrogen so if you're watching this and you're from the government get on with it [Laughter] i've got a new car and i like it i like it a lot it might be because i'm getting older thank you to all of those who've pointed that out but the mirai feels a bit like moving on it's not just a nice car it's also somehow enlightened and we are living in very exciting times that i feel privileged to be a part of it's like the poet larkin said bonds and gestures pushed to one side like an outdated combine harvester everything we held dear is up for scrutiny is up for change you know things that we burn things that we use how we get around our attitudes to one another our attitudes to sex to race to religion all those things it's fascinating and me and my new car are a very small part of that me and my mirai i'm actually quite proud of that i realize on drive tribe that there is a hard core of petrol head enthusiasts who cling to the idea of the internal combustion engine and the noise of a v8 and a manual gear shift and no abs and so on and so on and so on but we do have to think about the future of the car and this as you will see is a beautiful scene and it wasn't here a minute ago all this grew because i drove past in the mirai think of that you

Channel: DRIVETRIBE

Views: 1,742,600

Keywords: jeremy clarkson, richard hammond, james may, cars, top gear, the grand tour

Id: v99AthjW78U

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GopherHockey10]

Awesome, but the infrastructure is completely non existent in my neck of the woods.

[u/hermitcraftfan135]

“This time, I promise I will buy a much more exciting car” 2 days later: buys the exact same car

[u/nyatoh]

Oh man, this made me realise the trio are already aged

[u/dumahim]

I'd be more interested if he improperly drove it.

[u/RallyLancer]

As you can see he's done this properly

[u/rallied123]

Iconic

[u/KingDP]

Looking forward to the future of hydrogen cars, Once the infrastructure picks up. Unfortunately in most places it'll be on the backburners until EV Stations roll out everywhere.

[u/just_szabi]

I'm really hoping that Hydrogen wont just die and run into a dead end.

We have put up a fight against the oil lobbies, trying to save the planet, but it doesnt mean that we have too choose another lobby.

Developing two possible ways of transporting is a great thing and we shouldnt stop doing it cuz "my EV :(".

[u/setuid_w00t]

Why isn't hydrogen fuel cell technology being used as a range extender for electric cars? Electric cars already have electric motors, so you just need to add a fuel cell and hydrogen tank right?