Toyota Mirai Hydrogen FCV looks to be a big hit in the US too

The Toyota Mirai Hydrogen FCV has already taken Toyota by surprise in Japan with order vastly exceeding expectations, and the USA is set to do the same.

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It’s only been a little over a month since the Toyota Mirai Hydrogen FCV went on the market in Japan, but Toyota is already having to increase production to cope with demand. And it looks like they’re going to have the same ‘problem’ in the USA.

In Japan, Toyota were expecting to sell around 700 Mirai’s in the first year, but they actually received orders for more than 1500 in a month.

Now the news comes from Toyota’s VP in the US, Bob Carter, talking to USA Today, that the Mirai is also getting car buyers in the States excited too, with 16,000 firm expressions of interest so far, nine months before the Mirai officially goes on sale in the US.

How many of those firm expressions of interest translate in to real sales remains to be seen, but it’s clear there’s as much pent-up demand in the US for a car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell as there is in Japan, even with the only areas having any sort of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure being the West Coast and North East of America.

It’ll be a few months yet before Toyota let us know how strong the interest is in Europe for the Mirai, but it’s starting to look like the Mirai could be the catalyst for FCVs to get real traction in the market, and even mark another milestone in automotive history.