Toyota ups stake in Fuji Heavy, will co-develop cars with Subaru

Toyota now owns 16.16 percent of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., which owns Subaru

Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., which owns Subaru, has announced the sale of Subaru’s 61 million treasury stocks to Toyota Motor Corp., for US$291.1 million. The move is aimed at enhancing the capital and business partnership between the two companies and the deal will increase Toyota's voting rights in Fuji Heavy from 9.5 to 16.16 percent.

Toyota, which bought its existing stake in Fuji Heavy from GM in 2005, wants greater tangible synergies with Subaru, which is why it has decided to pump in more money in buying a bigger stake in the company.

Fuji Heavy currently makes the Camry for Toyota at its US plant, and sells the Justy compact car in Europe under an OEM contract with Daihatsu, another Toyota company that makes small cars. Now, with Toyota owning a bigger chunk of Fuji Heavy, the two companies will jointly develop and market compact sports cars using Subaru’s famous ‘boxer’ engines. The first of these is likely to be launched by the end of 2011.

Thailand to become first ASEAN country where a hybrid car will be produced

The Toyota Camry Hybrid will be produced in Thailand from 2009 onwards...

Toyota has announced that it will start production of a Camry Hybrid model in Thailand as part of its on-going efforts to develop the popularity of hybrid vehicles worldwide. The Japanese company will also produce the Camry Hybrid in Australia.

The Camry Hybrid will be built at Toyota Motor Thailand’s Gateway Plant, where the aim is for 9,000 vehicles to be built each year from 2009. In Australia, the car will go into production in 2010, at Toyota Motor Corporation Australia’s Altona factory, near Melbourne, with an annual target of 10,000 units.

Speaking in Bangkok today, Mitsuhiro Sonoda, Toyota Motor Thailand President, said ‘Thailand is the first ASEAN country to build hybrid vehicles. As the Camry has received a warm welcome from Thai customers, we are sure they will be satisfied not only with the product, but also with its environmental performance.’

Toyota President, Katsuaki Watanabe says, ‘We decided to build the Camry Hybrid in Australia because Australians are keenly aware of environmental issues, including global warming, and we are confident that the Camry Hybrid will be well received. Toyota intends to make further efforts toward popularising hybrid vehicles.’

Toyota aims to sell one million or more hybrid vehicles annually as early as possible in the 2010s, and taking market needs into consideration, the company is working to put in place an optimal hybrid vehicle production system worldwide.

New Toyota FCHV-adv gets 830km range

Toyota FCHV-adv: The next step in the evolution of fuell cell-powered vehicles

The Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) has announced that it has developed a fuel cell hybrid vehicle equipped with the newly designed high-performance Toyota FC Stack. The Toyota FCHV-adv has acquired vehicle-type certification from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) on the 3rd of June.

The Toyota FCHV-adv's fuel cell system was enhanced to further improve cruising distance and low-temperature starts, which had presented obstacles to widespread fuel cell vehicle use. The building block of the Toyota FC Stack is the Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA), where engineers focused on the basic problem of internally produced water interfering with electrical generation within the MEA at low temperatures.

Fundamental research was carried out to understand the behavior and amount of water generated in the fuel cell, allowing engineers to optimize the MEA design to improve low-temperature startup. As a result, the Toyota FCHV-adv can start and operate in cold regions at temperatures as low as -30 degrees Celsius.

In addition, fuel efficiency was improved by 25% through improving fuel cell unit performance, enhancing the regenerative brake system and reducing energy consumed by the auxiliary system. Further changes include incorporating degradation control for the electrode catalyst and improving fuel cell durability. Also, equipping the vehicle with TMC-developed 70Mpa high-pressure hydrogen tanks makes it possible to travel approximately 830km on a single fueling – performance that more than doubles that of the earlier Toyota FCHV.

With the equivalent of 122 horsepower 260Nm of torque, the Toyota FCHV-adv, which weighs 1,880 kilos, can hit a top speed of 155km/h. One of these vehicles is to be provided as a test-ride vehicle at the Environmental Showcase within the International Media Center during the July 7-9 Hokkaido Summit.

Toyota Crown Hybrid gets Night View tech

With Night View technology, car drivers can 'see' pedestrians even in poor visibility conditions

‘Night View’ is a new technology that could help car drivers ‘see’ pedestrians in the dark (perhaps in situations where street lighting is inadequate), and the first production car to get this technology is the Toyota Crown Hybrid.

On the Crown Hybrid, there’s a 1280x480 pixel LCD panel mounted on the dashboard. Via a ‘human recognition’ system, the panel displays a silhouette (or multiple silhouettes) if it detects human beings in the path of the car.

The system currently only works at speeds of 15 to 60km/h, and certain weather conditions may actually cause the system to stop working. So it isn’t perfect, and it’s supposed to be quite expensive. But still, Toyota is going ahead with this technology. To make Night View more popular, the Japanese company is working on lowering its cost, and also programming it to ‘recognize’ bicycles and various animals. So does that mean we may see this new tech on the Camry, in India, in a few years time? We hope so!

Toyota working with Subaru on new RWD coupe!

A Toyota-Subaru rear-wheel-drive coupe with 220bhp? Yes!
Pic: Edmunds

This one isn’t really very relevant for India, but we couldn’t resist posting this bit of news about Toyota working with WRC specialists Subaru, on an all-new, rear-wheel-drive coupe lineup.

According to a report on Edmunds, Toyota and Subaru are co-developing a new lineup of rear-wheel-drive sports coupes that employ a reworked version of the Subaru Impreza platform, boxer engine and transmission. Toyota's contribution to the mix will be product planning and quality control.

The Toyota coupe will only be sold in Japan (hey, maybe they’ll bring a few units to India as CBUs...?), while the Subaru car will be offered worldwide. The cars will be mechanically identical, but the styling would be different for both cars. Both cars will be built at Subaru's plant in Gunma, Japan. And both will be fitted with Subaru’s 2.0-litre boxer engine, developing 220bhp, mated to a six-speed manual transmission from the current Impreza WRX STi.

After the demise of cars like the Supra, Honda Integra Type R and the NSX, Toyota is once again looking a building a car that’s actually fun to drive, but why does it want to keep all its good stuff only in Japan? We hope that when the new Toyota coupe comes out in 2011, the company imports at least a few units to India as CBUs…

Dual Mode Vehicle: Toyota’s bus-train hybrid

Could this bus-train hybrid work in Indian cities like Mumbai?
Pic: Wired

According to a report on Wired, Toyota and its truck-making subsidiary Hino Motors have signed an agreement with Japan Rail to develop dual-mode vehicles, which will function as bus-train hybrids.

These dual-mode vehicles can carry 25 people and, reportedly, burn only one-fourth the amount of diesel fuel required by conventional buses. Japan Rail started testing these vehicles about 18 months ago, and if the vehicles are found viable, they may be used more widely in Japan in the near future.

Designed by Toyota, the dual-mode vehicles have four rubber tyres for road use and four steel wheels for traveling on rails. Switching from road to rail and back again take less than 15 seconds. The vehicle drives like a bus on the road, and a hydraulic system raises the tyres and lowers the steel wheels when the driver guides the vehicle onto the railway tracks. The dual-mode vehicle combines the versatility of a bus with the speed of a train, with the added advantage of better fuel economy overall.

Since these vehicles may make rail transit feasible in those areas that don't have the population density to support a lot of stations, and make mass transit a more viable option for distant suburbs, we wonder if this kind of a vehicle may also be useful for Indian cities like Mumbai, where the local train services are heavily overburdened, and where the Metro underground rail system is still a distant dream.

Toyota to spend almost US$200 million on automotive battery plant

Toyota says its Hybrid X concept proposes a new design language for its future cars, which will be more environmentally friendly...

To keep the Prius momentum going and in order to prepare for the upcoming battle to get ahead in the ‘green car’ race, Toyota will be spending US$192 million towards setting up a new manufacturing facility in Japan, where it will make batteries for petrol-electric hybrid vehicles.

In a JV with the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Toyota will build the new plant in the Shizuoka prefecture in central Japan. The plant will produce nickel-hydride batteries, which are already used on the bestselling Toyota Prius.

Toyota is also likely to set up a separate plant to make lithium-ion batteries, which it may start using in its next-generation hybrids over the next 2 – 3 years. Lithium-ion batteries, already used in laptops, produce more power and are smaller than nickel-metal hydride batteries.

Toyota says it wants to increase hybrid car sales to one million units per annum by 2010. Hybrids are already getting popular in the US, and other markets are sure to follow suit. So, of course, Toyota is not alone in pushing ahead with hybrids – companies like Honda and GM are also in the game, and many other companies – like Nissan and BMW – are expected to join in over the next 2 – 3 years.

Toyota working its employees to death in Japan?

Toyota - brilliant cars, but severely overworked employees...?

Toyota Motor Corp, which a court recently ruled had worked one of its employees to death, has announced that it would raise the limit on overtime pay for activities it classifies as voluntary.

The problem of overworking isn’t, of course, prevalent only at Toyota. Workers in Japan are often judged on the basis of the ‘dedication’ they show, and a direct measure of that, supposedly, is how many hours of work they are prepared to put in every day.

On average, workers in Japan use less than half of their paid holidays, and there are increasing reports of work-related depression and even incidents of ‘karoshi’ (death caused by overwork) in the country.

Toyota workers in Japan are expected ‘voluntarily’ participate in quality control-related activities beyond their normal working hours, and for this, they can only claim two hours’ overtime pay in a month. This may soon change, however, as an increasing number of workers are now unhappy with this system.

On its part, Toyota has announced that from the 1st of June, it would expand the range of work for which workers can claim overtime pay. But while the earlier limit was two hours overtime per month, the company has not announced the new limit yet.

It seems that with changing social conditions in Japan, there may be a gradual shift in work culture towards European-style work practices. This would probably mean better work/life balance for workers in the auto segment, but whether it would also affect Japan’s tradition of super-strict quality control remains to be seen.

Toyota Prius: Sales top 1 million mark

More than a million Prius cars have been sold worldwide, over the last 11 years!

Even as other carmakers are trying to hurry up and follow Toyota’s example, sales of the Toyota Prius – the world’s first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid vehicle – have passed the one million mark. At the end of April this year, Toyota had sold approximately 1,028,000 units of the Prius.

While Toyota has no immediate plans of bringing the Prius to India (though Honda says it will get the Civic Hybrid here very soon!), the Prius is sold in more than 40 countries already. Toyota claims the Prius has significantly reduced vehicle CO2 emissions worldwide.

The Prius was launched in Japan in 1997, and was introduced in Europe, North America and other markets in 2000. In 2005, Toyota began the first overseas production of the Prius in Changchun, China. Sales of the Prius are also expected to start in South Korea, in the latter half of 2009.

The second-generation Prius, equipped with the Toyota Hybrid System II, was introduced in 2003. As part of its high-priority environment-management policy, Toyota has made a concerted effort to promote and popularise hybrid technology, chiefly through the Prius. Toyota aims to sell one million or more hybrid vehicles annually, as early as possible, in the 2010s.

External links:
Used cars, better than hybrids?

K K Swamy leaves TKM, Toyota may split India operations into two units

Will the Toyota small car for India look something like this? We don't know, but we expect the new car to hit the market by 2010

Toyota Motor Corp is said to be considering splitting its Indian arm into two units. One unit will handle only manufacturing, and the other, marketing, sales and distribution.

This development follows the resignation of K K Swamy, Toyota Kirloskar Motor’s deputy managing director. Swamy, who put in his papers on Monday, had been with TKM since 1996, when Toyota first came to India in a JV with Kirloskar. It’s being said that Swamy, who handled finance, marketing and corporate planning functions at a very senior level in TKM, was not happy with his role being curtailed in the recent past. He is expected to make an announcement regarding his next assignment soon.

Toyota has separate units for handling manufacturing and marketing-related activities in Indonesia, and may attempt to replicate that model in India. According to some reports, Toyota will form a new unit, likely to be based in or around Delhi, for its marketing, sales and distribution functions. Meanwhile, the company’s existing facility near Bangalore will be developed solely as its manufacturing hub. This may also be centre of research and development for Toyota’s small car for India and other emerging markets.

Toyota Innova gets government approval

Indian Government officials will soon be driven around in the Toyota Innova

Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd has announced that the company has received an approval for supplying the Innova, a multi-utility vehicle, to the government. ‘The Government of India has accorded the Directorate General of Supplies & Disposals (DGS&D) rate contract for the Toyota Innova 2.5E seven and eight-seater diesel versions. With the DGS&D rate contract effective from April, the Toyota Innova 2.5E can now be supplied to all government agencies at the Union and State levels at the government approved rate,’ said a TKM statement.

For government departments’ bulk purchases, DGS&D approval is a mandatory requirement since it is the central purchase and quality assurance organisation under the Department of Supply, Ministry of Commerce.