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The Prius That Shook The World (book review)

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by Bob Allen, Jul 4, 2005.

  1. Bob Allen

    Bob Allen Captainbaba

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    Several of you have posted items about the free (6 bucks for shipping) book, "The Prius That Shook The World" (April, 1999).. a history of the development of the Classic Prius. I ordered my copy and read it. My observations about the book as a literary item:

    It's obviously translated from Japanese rather than having been written originally in English. The language is somewhat stilted; idiomatically correct, but "lifeless" and dry.

    Because of my unfamiliarity with Japanese names, I had difficulty following the "who's who" of characters: engineers, designers, CEO's, etc. I decided that it really didn't matter if I remembered the name of which engineer did what. Still, I found it hard to keep track because the chronology jumps back and forth in time as well.

    What I learned about the Prius:

    Toyota wanted to produce a revolutionary new car for the 21st Century in anticipation of increasingly stringent pollution standards (from California and China). This car would be a compact sedan and would need to get approximately 50% better mileage than the Corolla.

    The original concept, G21, was not a hybrid.

    The car would be available to consumers "prior" to the turn of the century, hence the name "Prius" (from the Latin meaning 'prior").

    Given the self imposed deadline, Toyota adopted a "Monster Garage" approach to designing and builiding the car. Somewhat like Spock making a communicator out of a toaster and a letter opener, only on a much larger scale.

    Toyota decided to produce virtually the entire car in house, rather than relying on outsider sources which would make it impossible for Toyota to control pricing.

    The electric motor had to be re-invented for mass production. Motors available at the time (1994) were virtually hand made and could not be produced in sufficient quantities by robotic mass production.

    The electric motor needed to be AC rather than DC. This necessitated a new inverter. Toyota invented an inverter for the Prius. Current inveters were either too small (for small appliances) or industrial sized. There were enormous problems doing this.

    Well into the conceptualization process, the decision was made to make the Prius a hybrid in order to achieve the necessary fuel efficiency and emissions reductions.

    Toyota could not understand why the US Gov't would not mandate greenhouse gas reduction, which was becoming a priority at Toyota as they looked at the parameters of car manufacturing in the 21st Century.

    The ICE needed to be re-designed to fit within the Prius' small engine compartment and to run properly along with the electric motor.

    Integrating the electric drive motor, the electric generator and the ICE proved to be very difficult. New software needed to be written and perfected to make the car safe at all operating temperatures.

    The battery needed to be re-invented. Nothing available in 1994 could produce the needed electrical power and accept rapid charge/discharge rates, while operating at temps from minus 30 C to plus 60 C.

    What began as Toyota's attempt to design a vehicle for the 21st Century became a revolutionary design that linterally changed the face of automobiles. Toyota engineers and CEOs began to appreciate the far reaching effect of Prius about a year before the car hit showrooms.

    t's utterly amazing that the Prius happened at all given the huge technical difficulties.

    While Toyota beat their brains out to meet the new California emissions standards, the Big 3 sat on their asses and lobbied Congress. GM execs were at the Prius unveiling and were stunned. Not that they did anything about it.

    Toyota engineers probably have the highest divorce rate in Japan, but they "won the war".
     
    #1 Bob Allen, Jul 4, 2005
  2. hobbit

    hobbit Senior Member

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    I'm about 3/4 of the way through it. The thing that bugs
    me a bit is the detail on how aggressive they'd made the
    development cycle, forcing everyone involved to scramble and
    possibly cut some corners in their engineering practice to make
    the deadlines. Why would a company *want* to detail the pressure
    they put their people under like that? They may indeed have
    done some brilliant work under the circumstances, but how
    much better might it have been if they'd had a little more
    time to consider things more deeply, do more testing,
    communicate better internally, etc?
    .
    I understand that it was a balance between engineering it
    right while exploring essentially uncharted territory,
    and getting successfully to market before the Big Three
    came up with something that barely worked and lowered the
    bar for everyone else, but sheesh, the idea of someone very
    high in the management chain arbitrarily deciding "oh, let's
    just knock a year off the development time" and expecting
    the same quality of product smacks of that good ole typical
    U.S. failure to understand real-life issues too. Well, heck,
    maybe they decided that they *were* at war, in a way, making
    that sense of failure-is-not-an-option urgency a driving
    force to permeate the minds of all the staff.
    .
    Whatever worked for them, though, I'm glad it all happened.
    And it's clear that with the next generation Prius they
    didn't let down their guard in the slightest, making tons
    of improvements where the known weak areas were.
    .
    _H*
     
    #2 hobbit, Jul 4, 2005
  3. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hobbit\";p=\"103935)</div>
    Welcome to The Real World. My background is Industrial Process Control and we face the same pressures. The pressure you describe is apparent across all areas of technology, whether Chemical Process or Automotive.

    This unrelenting pressure may force engineers to Clean Sheet something unique and novel, but you're right they sometimes really have to cut corners.

    Thing is, if Company X doesn't aggressively pursue new methods, another company like Company Y will and put them out of business.

    If GM had put the same effort - and money of course - into hybrids and quality control, that they did into lobbying against increased fuel economy or tighter emissions for short-term gain, they wouldn't be in the trouble they now are in.
     
    #3 jayman, Jul 4, 2005
  4. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    setting a tight schedule with no recourse built in was explained in the book as the method in which you garantee the best from the people involved. alternate plans gives worker a sense of "well if we cant figure it out, we still have an alternate plan"

    that is what they did not want. they also realized that the technology was already there. the only thing was to implement in a whole new way. its like a unassembled puzzle. u know all the pieces are there, all you need to do is develop a plan and do it.

    what they did may seem like a risk, but to me, its pure operational genius. the vaunted algorythm for the HSD was actually already in place doing another application. the guy who wrote it had to consult someone else who worked in a different field, but as soon as he understood the concept, he wrote it in a few days all the while kicking himself for not seeing something so simple and obvious.
     
    #4 DaveinOlyWA, Jul 4, 2005
  5. dvdirv

    dvdirv Member

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    I'm about halfway through the book and what stands out over everything else is that Toyota had a vision to produce a new state-of-the-art car that would triumph over traditional technology.

    In short, Toyota actually had a vision for a car for the 21st century. And while all this was going on what were our Big 3 automakers doing--nothing. That is until they learned about the success of the Prius.

    I guess they learned that they needed to build their own hybrid vehicle just to compete or satisfy the government or for the sake of their own image.

    The Big 3 never had any kind of a vision such as Toyota's to build a new technology vehicle. And I thought that each of the Big 3 had a R&D department to develop concept cars!
     
    #5 dvdirv, Jul 5, 2005
  6. Robert Taylor

    Robert Taylor New Member

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    A concept car for Detroit is new packaging on legacy systems.
     
    #6 Robert Taylor, Jul 5, 2005
  7. jfschultz

    jfschultz Active Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bob Allen\";p=\"103926)</div>
    It probably isn't that difficult to follow the chronology once you realize that exch chapter is covering some aspect of the development. The timeline backs up to the beginning of that particular work.
     
    #7 jfschultz, Jul 5, 2005
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