Green Cars Color Tokyo Motor Show

Published on 10/24/2005

By Ron Cogan

ForbesAutos.com

TOKYO — Traversing the halls of the 39th Tokyo Motor Show is no small thing. Making your way from one end to another in the expansive Makuhari Messe convention center almost requires the use of a grid pattern. It’s just that packed with cars, technologies, and journalists poised to drop in on any hapless PR person who could further elaborate on the displays shown within.

Volvo’s near-zero-emission gasoline 2006 V70 wagon with its smog-eating catalytic radiator was a high-profile example of a conventionally powered “green” vehicle.

We did not need such explanations. ForbesAutos.com’s observations at this year’s motor show were clear and immediate. This was the “greenest” show we have seen in this city since the early 1990s, when an environmental alignment of agendas and scientific thought brought to bear an array of battery electric, hydrogen, and otherwise environmentally-inclined displays among the performance, production, and exotic models offered at the various automakers’ well-moneyed stands.

What came to mind during our two-day hike in this center’s East, West, and Central Halls — as well as the areas offering tangential activities outside — is the unforgettable phrase whispered in confidence to a young Dustin Hoffman nearly four decades ago, in the classic film, “The Graduate:”

“Just one word: plastics.”

To be honest, it wasn’t really “plastics” we were hearing. That one word had morphed to “hybrids” and it was playing in our mind over, and over, and over again. This was a show wrapped around hybrids, influenced by hydrogen, and brought to us courtesy of an awakening that high gas prices had stirred a deep-seated interest in fuel economy, efficiencies, and anything remotely offering a new direction other than the one in which we had been headed for oh-so-long.

The Tokyo Motor Show was a watershed event in that these high-tech, gasoline-electric, computer-driven vehicles were everywhere, and they were in forms ranging from hatchbacks and sedans to crossover vehicles and SUVs. The message was clear: Yes, gas prices have increased an inordinate amount in the past year. The auto industry has been listening. There is a better direction. Plus, we’re compelled to say, let it be noted that marketing opportunities rarely escape those astute souls in the auto world whose job it is to pounce on the latest trends with unwavering vigor.

How pervasive was this? One marketing exec with a major automaker confided he’d had his fill of it all within the first half of opening day. While his company had plenty of high-tech hybrid products out there on the market and at their stand, there were other things to talk about. It’s as if much of the world’s media that descended on Tokyo had just discovered the importance, or in some cases the very existence, of hybrids while the more traditional hallmarks of quality, safety, and performance had simply faded away. They hadn’t, of course, but there was little doubt that most of the questions being floated were fundamental and focused on hybrids.

2007 Lexus GS 450h
|

For those interested in advanced technology vehicles, this was one amazing show. Take the view at Subaru, for instance. Those fans of this marque’s high-performance WRX STi will certainly appreciate the hybrid approach shown in the company’s unique B5 TPH crossover vehicle concept, which incorporates a turbocharged 2.0-liter Boxer engine with hybrid electric power. This first-ever turbocharged hybrid electric vehicle uses the same kind of innovative hybrid integration first shown in Subaru’s stylish B9 SC “Scrambler” sports car concept introduced last year, in which a thin electric motor and two-way clutch are smoothly integrated into the transmission packaging. BMW also offered its Concept X3 EfficientDynamics “active hybrid” concept. Like the B5 TPH, this hatchback integrates an efficient electric motor and two clutches within its transmission housing, but also adds within these confines super-capacitors and a motor controller. This so-called active transmission does away with the traditional flywheel through use of these components. Combining this electric power with the vehicle’s six cylinder powerplant adds an extra measure of performance, fuel efficiency, and fewer emissions.

While all-electric vehicles have largely fallen out of favor with the onset of production hybrids and fuel cell concepts, three high-profile battery electric vehicle concepts were at the show — the tiny Nissan Pivo city car, Volvo’s innovative 3CC and Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution MIEV (Mitsubishi In-wheel motor Electric Vehicle). The MIEV, like the 3CC, uses lithium-ion batteries for its power source. Each of its outer-rotor in-wheel motors fit within 20-inch alloys and could be used to create what Mitsubishi envisions as an evolutionary Super All-Wheel Control (S-AWC) vehicle dynamics control system. The MIEV features 0-60 mph acceleration of less than eight seconds and a top speed of 110 mph. Mitsubishi has previously said it would sell a production battery electric vehicle in 2010, but where — and in what form — remains to be seen.

ForbesAutos.com will mark this as the year when automakers decided they liked the buzzword “hybrid” so much it was gleefully integrated into the descriptions of their hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. No longer are many fuel-cell vehicles identified simply as such, but rather, they’ve taken on the generic “hybrid fuel cell” description. It doesn’t matter that many had used a second power source like batteries or capacitors all along to help manage electrical power and their label as hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles was just fine. These days, the word “hybrid” has taken on a new importance and apparently lends additional weight.

One of the notable fuel-cell concept vehicles on hand — and coincidentally one not identified as a ”hybrid” fuel cell — was Honda’s all-new and stylish FCX fuel cell sedan, which incorporates in-wheel electric motors, a smaller-than-ever fuel cell stack in a low platform and higher storage capacity hydrogen fuel tanks that provide a milestone 350-mile driving range. Tangentially, a Home Energy Station was shown that reforms a home’s natural gas to create electricity through a hydrogen fuel cell, ultimately powering a home, heating a home through the fuel cell’s waste heat, and also providing hydrogen for filling a fuel cell vehicle.

Not everything green at the Tokyo Motor Show was in the form of concept vehicles. On the contrary, there was also a heartening array of production U.S.-market hybrids, from the all-new 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid and coming 2007 Lexus GS 450h to models like the 2006 Toyota Prius and 2006 Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV. We can also count on at least some of the hybrid concept vehicles showcased in Tokyo to pave the way for production versions coming to showrooms soon enough.

Green, clean, and in some cases extreme . . . this is the finely-sliced, advanced technology cross-section of the always enlightening and entertaining 2005 Tokyo Motor Show. It leaves us wondering what’s coming up at the international 2006 auto shows in L.A. and Detroit in January.

• Forbes.com Highlights and Slideshow of the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.