How Long Can Toyota Put Off Figuring Out EVs?
The world’s No. 1 automaker has kept its focus on hybrids and gas-guzzlers, for better and worse.
A couple of hours west of Tokyo by bullet train, in the midsize town of Mizunami, a shuttered middle school is providing Japan’s carmakers with a different kind of education. A reverse-engineering company called Caresoft Global Technologies Inc. has turned the old junior high into a laboratory for electric-vehicle design. It pulls apart cars to study the innovations within, devise cost-saving proposals and pitch them to rival automakers. Some visiting clients study piles of parts in old classrooms, where blackboards are still dusted with chalk. Over in a room that once stored volleyballs, others review data gleaned from high-energy X-rays. And in what used to be the gym, there’s good reason for Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s leading car manufacturer, to be worried.
On a hardwood floor streaked with memories of three-pointers and roll shots, the Caresoft team has laid out the disassembled hulks of a Tesla Model Y, a BYD Seal and more than a dozen other electric cars. In comparing their parts, the most important metric is weight reduction. For the electric business to keep growing, the cars need to better compete with gas-guzzlers on range. Therefore most every design decision must take into account whether it makes the car lighter. As a basic example, consider one component: Toyota part #55330-42410, a 20-pound steel bar, known by engineers as a cross-car beam. The beam holds the steering wheel and dashboard instruments in place and helps protect the cabin during a collision.