Toyota's Mirai will add a pair of safety packages for the 2019 model year, as the company continues to offer the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle mostly on retail leases to private owners, according to the company.
The 2019 Mirai will offer Toyota Safety Sense (TSS) and TSS2. The TSS package will include automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, lane departure alert, automatic high beams, and road sign assist. The TSS package offered with Mirai won't include lane keeping assist and adaptive cruise control, which are available on other Toyotas with TSS.
The next-generation TSS2 package will carry over the automatic braking, lane departure, and auto high beams. It will include updated road sign assist technology that can identify stop, yield, do not enter, and speed limit signs.
Through October, Toyota has sold more than 4,217 Mirai sedans in the U.S. since it began selling the vehicle in August 2015, said Bryan Lyons, a Toyota spokesperson.
Buyers are 69% male with a median age of 48. About 49% have a post-graduate degree. Buyers have a median household income of $137,000 with half of the buyers above $150,000. Half of the buyers drive more than 40 miles per day and 95% use the Mirai as their primary vehicle, Lyons said.
Toyota has sold Mirai sedans to several California government agencies for their fleets, including CalTrans, the state of California, Sonoma County, Sacramento County, and the cities of Long Beach and Oakland. Other sales went to StratosFuel, a carsharing company that will begin operations in January in the Inland Empire area of southern California, according to Tom Deluise, a Toyota spokesman.
