|
The Environment As A Business
Opportunity
In
early September, Toyota held a North American investment briefing
in New York City that detailed the company’s past, present
and future prospects. During the presentation,
Cho outlined manyof the company’s global environmental initiatives.
Following are excerpts from his presentation that related to the
environment:
“Looking back over the patterns of Toyota’s growth over
the last 40 years, you can see that the 1970’s energy crises
and restrictions on exhaust emissions actually served as catalysts
for our rapid development. While global vehicle production over
this period increased by 3.3 times, Toyota boosted output by 38
times. This shows that in each growth period, Toyota was able to
come out on top because of its competitiveness in technologies.
“As environmental preservation becomes more prevalent on a
global scale, Toyota will regard as business opportunities the increasingly
tough fuel economy, exhaust emission and recycling regulations being
enforced around the world in response to concerns about global warming
and other problems. We will continue to invest aggressively to increase
our technological advantage with the aim of being the leader in
terms of environmental cleanliness, fuel economy, and ‘zero-waste’
manufacturing.
“This technological advantage I refer to is all about two things:
products and the means of production. One of our strengths in product
technology is hybrid vehicles. We have already applied our hybrid
systems in the Prius, Estima Hybrid and Crown Mild Hybrid models,
making us a leader in this field. Currently, aggregate global sales
of these models exceed 100,000 units, and we intend to increase
annual sales to 300,000 a year by around 2005. We are also proud
to exceed the world’s expectations about hybrids through continuous
performance enhancements.
“We are also working on fuel cells and hybrid vehicles that
combine fuel cells and hybrid technologies. Last year, for example,
we launched the FCHV-4 vehicle. I would like to emphasize that fuel
cell development is a part of our comprehensive Fuel Cell Vehicle
Development program. For commercialization of fuel cell vehicles
to occur, certain standards must be met—in areas such as reliability,
crash safety and ease of installation—and in this respect I
believe we have an advantage over competitors that outsource fuel
cell unit production. Seven FCHV-4s have already undergone trials
on public roads since 2001, five in Japan and two in the United
States. We have raised reliability to the point where limited marketing
can begin in both countries around the end of 2002.
“I have been speaking a great deal about the FCHV, and now
I would like to explain why we chose this name for our fuel cell
vehicle. The reason is because we have chosen to adopt what is generally
known as the hybrid system, in which a fuel cell is combined with
secondary batteries. Other automakers have recently introduced similar
systems, but Toyota has always led the world in the development
and adoption of this technology. In comparing the overall efficiency
of vehicles of different fuel categories, it is necessary to evaluate
the overall ‘well-to-wheel’ efficiency, which includes
fuel extraction, processing and automobile consumption. At the moment,
the efficiency of gasoline-powered hybrid vehicles (HVs) surpasses
that of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs). Therefore, by incorporating a
hybrid system that can recover and regulate energy to create a fuel
cell hybrid vehicle, superior performance can be achieved even when
compared with gasoline-hybrid vehicles. As part of our efforts to
create ‘superior technologies,’ we are aggressively developing
the fuel cell hybrid vehicle to further increase efficiency.
“Toyota has aggressively pursued technological development
of a wide range of alternative energy sources, such as compressed
natural gas (CNG), diesel engines, gasoline engines, electric vehicles
(EVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs). By using them in hybrid vehicles,
we are creating synergies and developing the ultimate eco-car—a
machine without rivals.
“Toyota believes that environmentally-friendly technologies
should be widely available, and for that reason we have stated our
intentions to make such technologies available to other car manufacturers
upon request. On Monday, (September 2, 2002) we announced a basic
agreement on a long-term, continuous transaction of hybrid systems,
including technical cooperation, with Nissan Motor Co. The agreement,
which aims for a long-term business relationship of 10 years or
longer, calls for Toyota to supply state-of-the-art hybrid system
components to Nissan. This is our first step to encourage the popularization
of our hybrid systems. As an initial project, Nissan will be installing
a hybrid system currently under development by Toyota in Nissan’s
vehicles to be sold in the United States in 2006. Volume is expected
to reach approximately 100,000 units within a five-year period beginning
in 2006. In addition, both companies have agreed to start exchanging
information and discussing joint development of components related
to hybrid systems. Our hope is that this collaboration will help
further decrease the cost of hybrid-vehicle components and increase
the sales of hybrid vehicles around the world.”
|
