Get Your Green Motor Running

Other materials makers are also scampering to develop new products for high-tech cars. Toray, a pioneer of high-tech materials like the carbon fiber it puts into aircraft wings and into the fuselage of the Boeing Dreamliner, too, is just one of them. The company recently set up a new automotive research-and-development center for advanced materials in Nagoya, just down the road from Toyota and suppliers. Toray holds 34 percent of the world carbon-fiber market, and aims to develop a carbon fiber cheap enough for use in car bodies. It hopes to more than double its sales to the auto sector to $3.5 billion by 2015. Teijin, another high-tech-materials maker, aims to "cut the weight of a car by half" by using a variety of new materials like polycarbonate resin, and a bubble-shaped prototype is on display in its Tokyo showroom. Meanwhile, a superlight sports car produced by Ken Okuyama Design is set for sale this fall in Japan. Using carbon fiber and aluminum generously, the model weighs only 750 kilograms.

Another potential growth industry: bioplastics, which have been attracting R&D money from Mazda and Toyota, among others. Because these materials are derived from plants rather than from petroleum (as most plastics are today), bioplastics are carbon-neutral and require much less energy to make. These companies are experimenting with a range of items, including installment panels and floor mats.

Of course, by betting heavily on all the green-car technologies, Japan could easily find itself getting a couple of calls badly wrong. It's certainly missed forecasts in the past—when, for example, Japanese mobile-phone companies ended up backing the wrong standard in the early 1990s, largely shutting themselves out of the global cell-phone boom that followed. The lithium-ion batteries that Japanese companies are investing in right now have plenty of limits, and it's always possible that nimble non-Japanese entrepreneurs could figure out an even better technology.

So far it's unclear which of the new green-car technologies will triumph in the race for "sustainable mobility." Hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles like Honda's Clarity still face some serious challenges if they're ever to break though into the market: not only are they costly, but the fuel stations and infrastructure to power them would have to be built from the ground up. While electric vehicles have the huge advantage of being able to tap into existing power networks, they, too, remain costly, and even the best batteries still don't offer the same range as a full tank of gasoline. Lithium-ion batteries hold some safety concerns. The batteries have a tendency to overheat, potentially causing fires; some manufacturers have had to recall lithium-ion laptop batteries for just this reason. Don Hillebrand, director at Argonne National Labs in Chicago and a leading researcher who has testified before the U.S. Congress on battery technology, warns: "This is a time of great potential and huge risk. Those leaders today may not stay leaders, because rules are going to change quickly."

Even the popular hybrids are still a niche product. But as far as Japanese carmakers are concerned, gasoline is no longer where the action is. Hillebrand believes that green technologies are changing the industry in an unprecedented way. If Ford invented modern car manufacturing when it built the first assembly line for the Model T, says Hillebrand, then the emerging green technology represents "the second invention of the auto industry. And it's the Japanese who are leading the charge."

Ecofriendly cars are leaving the auto shows and the design exhibitions and taking to the streets. Honda, for one, has already started leasing the FCX Clarity to a select group of high-profile customers in southern California. As American actress Jean Harris, one of those chosen as a Clarity user, says: "I love that it's not a huge leap from what we're already used to. It feels like a space-age regular car." If Japanese managers have their way, that simple phrase could well provide the key to a new economic boom.

© 2008