Toyota Mirai Hydrogen FCV production increased to deal with unexpected demand

Following Toyota’s recent announcement that orders for the hydrogen-powered Mira FCV exceed expectations, production is being increased.

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Toyota’s expectations for sale of the Mirai – their new hydrogen-powered FCV saloon car – were understandably conservative. But they’ve been caught on the hop in Japan, where the Mirai is already on sale, with orders for 1500 Mirai FCVs so far – more than twice the planned rate of production.

That presents Toyota with something of a problem, especially as the Mirai is scheduled to go on sale in the UK, Europe and the USA later in 2015.

Part of the already scheduled production is earmarked for markets other than Japan for 2015 – a total of 700 cars – so the Japanese demand is at levels four times the allocation for this year.

It seems Toyota can’t increase production quickly, but they are now planning to build 2.000 Mirai’s in 2016 and 3,000 in 2017, with allocations spread across different markets according to demand.

That does mean those early Japanese customers are going to have to wait a while to get their cars, and Toyota are probably going to have to look at production rates again if demand in other markets reflects Japanese sales.

Still, it’s a ‘good’ problem for Toyota to have, and does seem to indicate there will  be a demand in other markets for the hydrogen-powered Mirai, demand that should drive the establishment of a hydrogen refuelling network.