Nitin Gadkari talks about his Toyota Mirai hydrogen powered car [Video]

The proactive measures introduced by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, led by Mr. Nitin Gadkari, have drastically changed the demographics of the automotive industry in recent times. Nitin Gadkari recently made headlines for adding a Toyota Mirai to his official fleet of cars, and since his acquisition, he was often seen arriving at parliament or other government events in the Mirai. A YouTube video from the channel “Jist” gave a closer look at the Toyota Mirai of Nitin Gadkari, which was the first and currently the only Mirai in India.

The video started with Nitin Gadkari introducing his Toyota Mirai to the interviewer, addressing it as India’s only hydrogen-powered car at the moment. However, it should be noted that the second-generation Mirai used by Nitin Gadkari was not officially sold by Toyota in India but was privately imported from Japan. After a brief introduction to the car, the interviewer and Nitin Gadkari went for a drive in the Toyota Mirai, during which they discussed the benefits, challenges faced, and the future of hydrogen-powered cars in India.

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In the video, Nitin Gadkari claimed that the Toyota Mirai was a supremely refined, calm, vibration-free, and pollution-free car to use on Indian roads. While there were no hydrogen-filling stations in India at the time, Nitin Gadkari mentioned that he refilled the hydrogen tanks of the Mirai at a depot of the Indian Oil Research Institute in Faridabad, where hydrogen was produced using petroleum. Gadkari claimed that currently, it cost $3 for a kilogram of hydrogen, which he intended to bring down to $1 in a year.

During the drive, Nitin Gadkari also mentioned that there were two hindrances to the wider acceptance of hydrogen-powered cars – the lack of hydrogen filling stations and the expensive and limited technology for producing hydrogen for vehicles in India. However, he mentioned that a few automakers like Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland had already started implementing the use of hydrogen in the internal combustion engines of their commercial vehicles.

The Toyota Mirai used by Nitin Gadkari was the second-generation model, introduced in 2021. Built on Toyota’s flexible TNGA architecture, the Mirai (Japanese word for “future”) used a rear motor and rear-wheel drive configuration. Powering the Mirai was a hydrogen fuel-cell powered 4JM electric motor, which generated 182 bhp of power and 300 Nm of torque. The Mirai also got a single-speed automatic transmission and a 1.2 kWh lithium-ion battery, along with three hydrogen tanks, which had a collective range of 647 km.

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