Toyota engineer dreams of cars made from seaweed
February 16, 2009 by Matt Brogan
Hybrid cars made from seaweed – it sounds a little far fetched – but such is the dream of the Toyota engineer responsible for the 1/X concept car to be shown at this year’s Melbourne International Motor Show.
The 1/X (pronounced “one-Xth”) gets its name because it envisages a hybrid-powered car of the future with a fraction of the environmental footprint of today’s cleanest cars.
Project manager Tetsuya Kaida said the 1/X design concept uses high-tech materials available today, but is built with the future in mind.
“We used light-weight carbon-fibre reinforced plastic throughout the body frame for its superior collision safety – but that material is made from oil,” Mr Kaida said. “In the future, I’m sure we will have access to new and better materials, such as those made from plants – something natural, maybe something like paper. In fact, I want to create such a vehicle from seaweed because Japan is surrounded by the sea. This is my dream.”
Mr Kaida said the 1/X forces people to redefine their ideas of what it means to be environmentally considerate and said it points the way towards a much more sustainable relationship between humans and the environment.
The technologies it explores could be used for all Toyota vehicles – from a Yaris to a LandCruiser and is also the direction for a future Prius – two or three generations ahead of the current car.
Interior space is on par with today’s Prius, but – at around 420kg – the concept car weighs just one-third of other vehicles in its class.
Designers are aiming at twice the fuel economy by combining a plug-in hybrid powertrain with flexible fuel technology using a mixture of ethanol and petrol.
The 500cc engine is one-third the size of today’s Prius and allows charging from external sources, such as a powerpoint at home or at work with its electric-only cruising distance would be longer than today’s battery technology would allow, emitting less CO2 and helping to reduce air pollution.
The innovative and highly efficient power unit is mounted midship, under the rear seat, and drives the rear wheels.
Print it: 
Yum………….wrap it up in some rice ,salmon and wasabi and it will be the first interesting Toyota for years.
the current batch of toyotas on offer are about as desirable as a car load of seaweed.
Must be offline then Jackie because i cant see any of this content duplicated.
Hal as long as they farm their own and dont go looking at raping the seas of it like they do the Whales……….
So this is why they want to get rid of the whales???? Stops them from disturbing the water flow and Feng Shue of the seaweed paddocks :-)
Looks to me like his suit is made from seaweed. Was’nt their a car made from cotton wool once?
Mr Kaida is a visionary and actually gets the holistic sustainability thing. Just like Henry Ford did in 1941 when he made a car out of soybeans, as this extract will explain.
“But Ford used soybeans to do more than just amuse visitors at lunch. Ford was looking for projects that combined industry with the output of agriculture. Among other things, Ford had an abiding interest in developing soybean-based plastics. Throughout the 1930s Ford pioneered the use of soybeans in plastics that he used in his automobiles. The soybean components included plastic parts (even body panels), seat covers and paint. Ford’s soybean-automobile project culminated in August 1941, when he patented an automobile made almost entirely of soybean plastic, attached to a tubular welded frame.
Ford’s soybean-car weighed 30% less than a car made of steel. Even better, the plastic panels did not rust. And an array of experiments concluded that they were ten times as durable as steel. Ford claimed that plastic panels made the car safer than traditional steel cars because the car could roll over without being crushed. Ford hoped that the new soybean plastic would replace metal, which was in short supply in the years just before World War II as the U.S. government was building up the country’s navy. Furthermore, Ford’s soybean-car ran on grain alcohol — yes, ethanol — instead of gasoline.
Ford’s engineers were building a second soybean-based car when the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941. Because of the war, the federal government suspended all U.S. automobile production for the duration of the conflict. Thus Ford’s soybean-based car experiment languished. Almost all of the Ford Company’s resources were directed towards war-related production. Indeed, in one gigantic undertaking Ford converted the massive facility at Willow Run, Michigan to building B-24 bombers. At one point during the war, the Willow Run plant rolled a brand-new B-24 — made of over 140,000 separate parts — off the assembly line every hour. This was a far cry from building automobiles — made of soybeans or otherwise. By the end of the war in September 1945 the idea of a soybean car had simply fallen through the cracks”.
REFERENCE: http://alpha411.blogspot.com/2.....n-car.html
Mmm seaweed, looks like the price of Sushi will fly if this happens.
On the visionary note, I like it, keep the ‘outside the square’ ideas rolling.
Yum!!! Will we get fries with that??
This car came out 2 years ago it’s old.
Yeah I’d seen it before too, but I think the point is more that Melbourne will get to see it at the Motor Show.
Nothing new about this. Anyone remember the van made out of weed that Cheech and Chong drove accross the US/Mexico border? I’m probably showing my age…
hahaha Pious,I think we all do on this site some times.
Up in Smoke………..Which is where this idea will end up I think but nowhere as enjoyable to in-hail.
BM, I still like you comment about japanese raping whales.
I know one thing, Toybota smoke alot of hallucinating weed, how come they adversely tell us the game has changed when Toybota was never part of it in the first place.
hahaha Smarty Thommo…you know what I meant ;)
Nothing that a bit of roundup won’t fix.haha
If they do make it.. I can only assume that you would have a WHALE of a time driving it..
I also expect that like the Corolla it would have Toyota’s safety SHELL.. another cool feature would have is SEA-GULL Wing doors
However; you would always be takin the car to Ultra TUNA for a wheel alignment as it would constantly be CRAB-bing
But nothing kan change the fact that it looks like CARP
Bet that took a while hey Les?
they already make seaweed cars,spent 4 days in cairns had a camry renter.what a horrible car 16.000 kays on the clock and it was stuffed.and people actualy buy these things.
Has anyone actually researched the possibility of making plastic from seaweed, or is this just more Toyota marketing fiction tarted up as “research”? I did a Google search and the only thing that came up was this engineer’s quote. I know that not finding it on the internet doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t exist, but you’d think there would be something online.