jawfish

Toyota 1/x Concept: Vaporware or Hypercar?
john posted in rides, technologies on October 11th, 2007

Yesterday Toyota displayed a stunning new concept car at the Tokyo Motor Show. It’s not subject to gushing praise because it is weirdly beautiful or powerful, but because it follows the plan of Amory Lovin’s Hypercar concept. Just this week I wrote that the Frankfurt show had remarkable green cars, which together, constitute a turning point in low-emission, low GHG ( greenhouse gas) cars. Well this concept car is the next step beyond that.

Toyota 1/x concept ( all 1/x photos by Toyota)

The goal in creating a revolutionary green car is fairly simple: it must have roughly the same utility as an average passenger car, yet consume far less fossil fuels in manufacturing, end-of-life, and on the road. It also must introduce much less GHG to the atmosphere than current small cars. A slightly less important feature is the ability to use multiple types of liquid fuels, because it’s not at all certain than any one bio-fuel will dominate the future market.

Getting there is much harder than defining the goal. There are three ways to make a much greener car:
1) consume clean fuels like electricity or hydrogen
2) consume far less of a somewhat cleaner fuel, like bio-fuels or bio-diesel, and clean up the exhaust
3) combine 1 and 2 - the hybrid

There are numerous technologies on the way that follow number 1, but electricity and hydrogen are not yet widely available from clean sources, though even coal-fired electricity is quite a bit cleaner than gasoline. But storage and supply are still major technical and cost issues for these fuels today.

In order to follow number 2, you have to build a lighter car for stop-and-go driving, and an aerodynamic car for highway driving. Engines are already very highly developed, so not much more efficiency can be squeezed out of them, so the weight, or inertia, side of the equation must be addressed.

Number 3, the hybrid, actually adds weight and complexity, but it provides a way to recover the lost energy from braking. In a pluggable hybrid it also uses electricity as a fuel, by charging the battery pack from the wall socket.

Of the OEM cars on the road in the US today ( including January 2008) the Honda and Toyota hybrids, and the two-seat Smart microcar are the only vehicles that achieve the first step of getting to 45-60 mpg on gasoline. The Smart car gets its efficiency from light weight, small size, and a small engine. The hybrids get theirs by maximizing other efficiencies, and storing and reusing braking energy in a battery pack.

Even the Smart weighs about 1600 lbs, and the Toyota Prius, most popular of the hybrids, weighs almost 3000 lbs. When my 1957 MGA weighed about 1500 lbs, why so heavy today?

an MGA roadster

Well, because a 1957 MGA did not have sound insulation, roll-up windows, or any comfort amenities at all. The seats were just shells, the top leaked, and there were no door locks. Crash standards were not discussed. The fragile and temperamental motor made less power than any of my last four motorcycles. The electrics were by Lucas, Prince of Darkness.

The fact is, given the demands of modern buyers for crashworthiness, electric accessories, comfort, and quiet, the Prius is about as light as a 4-5 seat car can be made if it has a complex drivetrain with gas and electric motors and a battery pack. That is, it is as light as conventional steel unibody construction can make it. The Smart weighs less because it is much smaller, seats two, and uses an unconventional steel system where the chassis is also the roll cage and is visible.

Smart ForTwo

The Toyota 1/x uses an utterly unconventional body-chassis made of CFRP ( Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic), a newer composite related to the exotic carbon fiber of airplanes and Formula One cars, but cheaper and much easier to manufacture.

Roof of Toyota 1/x notice the thin pillars and struts.
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What about the Hypercar?

The Hypercar concept was developed and promoted by Amory Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute in the 1990s. Its basic tenets are:

A Hypercar® vehicle is designed to capture the synergies of: ultralight construction; low-drag design; hybrid-electric drive; and, efficient accessories to achieve 3 to 5-fold improvement in fuel economy, equal or better performance, safety, amenity and affordability, compared to today’s vehicles.

What about the Toyota 1/x? ( source: press release )

Toyota 1/x

1/X
The 1/X (pronounced “one-Xth”) is a concept vehicle that redefines from its very roots the idea of what it means to be environmentally considerate. Among its attributes, the vehicle—with a design that aims to harmoniously coexist with people and society—weighs only “1/Xth” that of other vehicles in its class.

* Maintains an interior space on par with that of the Prius, with an aimed-for fuel efficiency that is double and a weight reduced to 420 kilograms (about one third the weight of the Prius).
* Combines fossil fuel consumption-reducing FFV* technology and a plug-in hybrid powertrain with a displacement of only 500cc that allows charging from an external power source and a longer electric-motor cruising distance; thus, in addition to being adapted for energy diversity, emits less CO2 and contributes to the prevention of air pollution.
* Locates the power unit beneath the rear seat (for a midship, rear-wheel-drive system) to contribute to an innovative and highly efficient package.
* Adopts light but highly rigid carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) throughout the body frame to ensure superior collision safety, while allowing narrower pillars for a better field of vision.

* Flexible fuel vehicles: Vehicles capable of running on gasoline and ethanol, etc., mixed in arbitrary proportions

Sounds the same doesn’t it? Now Jawfish likes to think that our staff is “environmentally considerate” and “aims to harmoniously coexist with people and society” and we could come up with a better name, but our current fleet can’t match these proposed figures from the Toyota 1/x:

Twice the mpg of the Prius ( but adding pluggable electric power)
A weight of less than 900 lbs

doorless view

If you drive 10,000 miles a year, a little below the average, in a minivan or small SUV that gets 20 mpg, the 1/x concept would save you $1200 a year. Plus you would be saving a lot of GHG, and looking very cool.

Minivan: 20 mpg 500 gallons burned, about $1500 USD
Prius: 50 mpg 200 gallons, about $600USD
1/x: 100mpg 100 gallons, about $300USD and far less GHG, plus some added electricity cost

But is it Vaporware?

Well the CRFP is a real product, with a lot of development. The numbers make sense, if the weight can be held that low. Since even racing motorcycles weigh 250-350 lbs, it doesn’t seem likely that a true car could be lighter than 800-900 lbs. Even if it weighs 1200 lbs in a production version, that would be less than half the weight of a Prius. Is it a stalking horse designed to upstage the competition who are still putting first generation hybrid systems into conventional cars?

Let’s hope it’s got some engineering reality behind it. If they can build it and sell it for $30k USD, I predict they’ll sell every one they can build.

What do you think?

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