Toyota spends approximately $USI.2 billion on alternative energy R&D from a total R&D budget of around $US6 billion. Toyota's environmental programs reflect a holistic approach focusing on all activities and all stages of a vehicles life cycle.
Toyota has brought to market a world leading range of environmental products. It is possible to buy a RAV4 EV electric vehicle in the US and Japan, a Hybrid Coaster bus in Japan, Prius in Japan, of course, and soon Prius in North America and Europe.
While there is the current, almost Holy- Grailish pursuit of hydrogen cars as the ultimate solution, there are many steps along the way in both product and environmental arenas that need to be initiated.
By environment, in this context, 1 am referring to the societal, legislative and physical surroundings, mores and attitudes rather than just the adjudged green-ness of a specific item.
CNG is out in the marketplace making slow, but steady headway.
While it is clean burning and in plentiful supply with a reasonably even global distribution, its drawback is that is less energy dense than petrol and so has required either a large tank or a reduced driving range.
Toyota started development of CNG powered vehicles back in 1984 and now has a range of commercial vehicles which use CNG. Toyota has also just released a CNG-powered, four-cylinder Carnry for limited volume sales to fleets in the USA with volumes planned to increase over the next two years based on continued research and development into the viability of CNG.
To overcome the traditional obstacle of limited range, Toyota has developed a special 135-litre CNG tank that can withstand 200 atmospheres of pressure.
Located in front of the luggage space this tank can store enough CNG to give the modified Carnry a cruising range of 350km on a single charge.
The tank is made from an aluminium-carbon fibre composite to reduce mass: when full, it weighs just 70kg.
Until recently, diesel engines for passenger cars relied on secondary (or swirl) chamber fuel injection.
With the increasing importance of carbon dioxide reduction more focus was placed on developing direct injection which offers superior combustion efficiency. That it achieves this with low speed black smoke and diesel knock required some serious thought.
A new two-litre diesel engine features twin cams, four valves per cylinder and a common rail injection system with vertical injectors which provide an optimum fuel delivery and atomisation process.
This results in improved fuel efficiency with performance and quietness of operation that matches petrol engines.
Toyota has also developed a new oxidation catalytic converter especially for diesel engines. When the converters temperature is too low to promote reactions, it temporarily scavenges hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and soluble organic fractions (SOF) from exhaust emissions.
When the temperature is high enough, it oxidises the HC, CO and SOF.
This new catalyst reduces the emissions of these compounds by between 50 per cent and 90 percent.
Recently the California Air Resources Board (CARB) decreed that diesel exhaust fuels were 'toxic air contaminants' as they contained the nasty little compound 3,Nitrobenzathrone, a carcinogen that is about the worst one yet discovered, with the ability to cause 6 million mutations per nanomole. This is not pleasant news and it casts the European preference for diesels in a somewhat dark light.
Moving on now to advances in petrol engine technology as evidenced by the Toyota D-4 direct injection petrol engine.
While direct injection petrol engines have been around, in the aircraft industry for 50 years there has been no widespread adoption onto mainstream vehicles due to the cost of developing suitably accurate fuel delivery systems.
With the advent of advanced fuel injection control systems these hurdles can be overcome.
The lack of controls on the sulphur content in Australian fuels means that this technology can only be used in more enlightened markets such as New Zealand where the petroleum industry made the commitment to upgrade their refineries to ensure they remained competitive on the world stage.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Toyota developed a fully electric RAV4 to meet the CARB mandate for
ZEV's in the LA basin.
ZEV's which. by default, are currently electric vehicles are actually more polluting than a petrol- engined vehicle according to a recent German study when you include the power generation and transport phases.
In LA. the pollution is shifted to New Mexico and in Sydney it would
be shifted upstream, to Lithgow or even
Victoria. The ideal solution would come from a mixture of wind,
solar and tidal power generation methods to give
truly clean transport.
Currently they are, however, an ideal solution to topical air shed quality problem areas such as LA, Athens and Sydney.
These vehicles are very expensive both to produce and maintain,. but because of Toyota's commitment to the environment we continue to sell them. Toyota continues to research electric vehicles and batteries to ensure we have the best technology available.
Toyota has also undertaken extensive development work on various types of hybrid vehicles to suit a range of transport requirements. A 24-seat Coaster bus which is on sale in Japan is a series petrol electric hybrid. This means that the compact 1.5 litre petrol engine runs continuously to generate electricity which is stored in the battery. The battery then provides the power to drive the rear wheels via a big 70kw motor.
Compared with traditional petrol and diesel-powered buses. it offers much cleaner emissions, lower noise and good fuel efficiency. What's 'more, since it does not require an external charging system like EVs, it does not have the same range restrictions.
It is the optimum vehicle for commuter and shuttle buses operating in suburban traffic.
A vehicle that has a potentially greater degree of relevance to the general motoring public is the PRIUS parallel petrol electric hybrid. This vehicle has a 43kw petrol engine and a 30kw electric motor, both of which can drive the wheels and charge the batteries.
From an engineering perspective this is a very complex system with the interactions between the components controlled by an army of processors. The beauty of it is that there are no special requirements for the owner to follow. When the fuel gauge is low put more fuel in. That's about the extent of it.
Because of the underlying technology though, this vehicle, which is a full five-seater, cuts emissions in half and achieves a fuel economy figure of 3.61/100km on the Japanese 10/15 mode test.
It achieves this because when the vehicle is at rest or at low speed/small throttle operation, the petrol engine is turned off and electricity from the battery is used to power the vehicle. The petrol engine and the electric motor drive the wheels through a planetry gear assembly which means that the engine is allowed to run in its most efficient operating range.
Toyota has conducted parallel R&D on two types of FCEVs. The pace of development has been stepped up over the last few years with the promised commercial availability in 2003.
Interestingly, the Necar4 timing has been brought forward to this timing as well so hopefully this competitiveness between the manufacturers bodes well for the consumer.
The first type, a methanol reformer, has already been developed in working prototype form back in 1997. This compact unit has a range of 400km to 500 km on a single tank of Methanol.
The second type that Toyota is testing is a hydrogen absorbing alloy FCEV. In early closed course testing in 1996 it ran for 250km on 2kg of hydrogen. Comparing the thermal energy of petrol and hydrogen, that's equivalent to fuel economy of 34km/litre in a petrol powered vehicle.
The hydrogen absorbing alloy FCEV emits no carbon dioxide or other exhaust gasses, making it perhaps the ultimate eco-car.
A recent program introduced by Toyota as a pilot test in Nagoya is the e.com EV, a pure electric, 18kw, two-seater vehicle used for both internodal and intermodal travel
THE CRAYON
The pilot test is known as CRAYON which is Toyota's solution for environment-friendly
mobility. The compact e.com produces no emissions and runs very quietly,
lessening local noise and air pollution.
Its small size and low weight also reduce energy consumption contributing to a reduction in the impact of transport on global warming.
It is essential that issues such as Intelligent Traffic Systems, taxation, legislation, social engineering and urban form are considered by the governments and their planning functions to reduce road congestion and pollution, increase economy and average travel speeds with the flow on benefits in health and well-being of the populace.
An important first step would be to separate government employees from their large, six-cylinder cars and put them into smaller, more efficient vehicles to demonstrate their commitment to change.
It is no coincidence that eco-vehicles, in the main, are not large capacity, low -tech engined, large platform family cars, so keeping vehicles such as these out of the daily traffic congestion would be a worthwhile step in the right direction.
The Toyota attitude can be succinctly summed up by its "Total Clean" concept. It uses the basic Reduce, Re-use, Recycle program with the additional backend components of materials refinement for ease of recycling and the extraction of energy from true waste.
One of the larger and difficult components to recycle has traditionally been painted bumper covers and side body cladding panels.
To overcome this Toyota developed TSOP, Toyota Super Olefin Polymer which has been subsequently licensed to European and American car makers so that a global standard exists ... always a good thing.
While the unpainted TSOP bumpers are now readily recycled, an additional process has been implemented using amino acids and high temperatures to provide the same recyclability for their painted counterparts.
Another initiative is the development and construction of a pilot plant to process the residue from materials shredding during the recycling process for trim and other components.
It uses air and gravity sorters to extract up to 12 different materials which can then be used in soundproofing and reinforcing in building tiles used in the Japanese construction industry.
The final component of the recycling process is the disposal of waste, those materials that current technology has not found away to re-use or recycle.
A specialised incinerator that allows the disposal of this waste by burning it to provide 16 MW of electricity and steam which is then re-used in the manufacturing processes.
It does this with a laudable 85 per cent thermal efficiency and saves the burning of 25,000 tonnes of coal a year.
Topics of specific relevance to us as car makers are a reduction on taxes to encourage people to buy Environmentally Friendly Automotive Technology (or EFAT), taxing gas guzzlers, allowing advanced technology in by harmonising regulations with global regulations and enforcing stricter fuel quality regulations to remove sulphur from petrol and giving consistent high quality diesel.
Toyota has teamed up with Panasonic EV Energy Co. Ltd to develop a compact, high performance nickel-metal hydride battery for use in hybrid vehicles.
The new battery is expected to take up 40 per cent less space in a hybrid car than current nickel-metal hydride batteries, with 20 per cent less mass.
These new batteries can be used equally effectively in electric vehicles, Hybrids and in Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicles. This is expected to contribute to the earlier commercialisation of FCHVs
Toyota also announced that, as part of its efforts toward the commercialisation of fuel cell vehicles, it has made quantum improvements in key fuel cell system components, namely in the fuel stack, methanol reformer, air compressor and hydrogen absorbing alloy tank.
A crucial aspect of the development of fuel cell vehicles is the selection of an appropriate fuel. In addition to the use of pure hydrogen, Toyota is developing methods of obtaining hydrogen from methanol, natural gas,. petrol and other potential fuels.
Each of these options is being studied closely so that Toyota can reach a comprehensive decision based on the technical possibilities, future supply prospects and the possibilities for infrastructure development.