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In other words, you can't automate anything until you can do it by hand very well. Just got out of a meeting where we discussed why we can't automate software testing when we don't know what to test or what typically fails so we can focus on those things. You need to focus on certain things, because our software has over 15k features, and you can't automate tests for all of them! That's just like with a car that has around 30k parts according to:

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/kids/faq/d/01/04/

Then if you include all of the combinations of settings, you can very easily end-up with more combinations than there are particles in the universe. For example, we have almost 120k sales tax rules so the number of combinations just explodes. Our solution is to compare the output from previous runs to a new run while manually ignoring failures because of fixes. It doesn't scale.

Toyota says a complete car has about 30,000 parts. For sure, more than 1/30th of those are going to be in the engine.

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/kid...

For the purpose of how complicated a car is, a part is clearly everything that is manufactured separately. Not the bundle of parts that happens to come in a pack when you order a replacement. Every nut, bolt and ball bearing is a separate part.

Yike! Thought I did. Hang on, I'll go look for it Damn. I seem to have lost it HA!! http://newsroom.toyota.co.jp/e... Looks like they are going for 10% NET fuel economy increase.

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/environment/recycle/battery/index.html

The "Big Honkin' Battery" you refer to is fully recycled. Perhaps research a bit before spouting off?

They also have one that plays the trumpet: http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/special/robot/

And backup dancers.

Take a look at page 10 and 11 of this link. It's the Hybrid Synergy drive "power split device".

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/tech/environment/ths2/SpecialReports_12.pdf

See the planetary setup on page 10 with an engine (power input) on one side and an electric motor on the other "input" and the output comes out the side (ring gear).

The power from the engine (carrier) is split between the generator (sun) and the motor/output (ring gear) and this ratio is continuously variable.

Toyota's system is slightly different in that the motor is at the output shaft, there is no control over the "third shaft", but the motor could easily have been put there instead.

In BMW's power steering:

http://www.usautoparts.net/bmw/technology/afs.htm

The motor is on the "third shaft". Your steering input is at a fixed rate (let's say) and by BMW turning their DC motor (third shaft) of the planetary set, it alters the output shaft speed. If they turn it the same way you are turning, it adds to the output, it makes the steering quicker, if they spin it the other way it slows it (but increases torque).

Frankly, I'm sure there are more examples outside cars.

October 6, 2005
Toyota Develops Shrub that Greatly Improves Air Quality
--New Cherry Sage Better Cleanses Air, Reduces "Urban Heat Island Effect"--
http://www2.toyota.co.jp/en/news/05/1006.html
"TMC started selling its Gardenia plant, known as the "Wald", which has a very high atmospheric-cleansing ability, in October 2003."

The grass mentioned in TFA linked by /. is a breed of "zoysia grass" known as "TM9"
I read about it on page 40 of Toyota's 2009 sustainability report (8MB PDF) and it has been on sale since 2006.

Nothing in this story is new except for the positive PR that Toyota is getting.

October 6, 2005
Toyota Develops Shrub that Greatly Improves Air Quality
--New Cherry Sage Better Cleanses Air, Reduces "Urban Heat Island Effect"--
http://www2.toyota.co.jp/en/news/05/1006.html
"TMC started selling its Gardenia plant, known as the "Wald", which has a very high atmospheric-cleansing ability, in October 2003."

The grass mentioned in TFA linked by /. is a breed of "zoysia grass" known as "TM9"
I read about it on page 40 of Toyota's 2009 sustainability report (8MB PDF) and it has been on sale since 2006.

Nothing in this story is new except for the positive PR that Toyota is getting.

Honda is really not that different from Toyota. Every manufacturer has cars that have X problems especially when launching a new technology, line or integration.

Hate to break it to you, but Toyota does robotics, as well. Most heavy industries do at least a bit of this stuff, especially in Japan.

...is to research and develop products for the future, not the present. It's called having "vision" and being able to (correctly) see where the industry was heading, and having products available when they're wanted.

Toyota's understanding of what buyers will value in the future enabled it to identify low emissions as a key selling feature as early as 1992, in the first version of its Earth Charter. Unlike US automakers, who likely would send this announcement (if it existed at all) to their PR firm to be published and forgotten, this program was acted upon by Toyota's R&D organization, as a bet on how the industry would change in the future.

One of the most frustrating parts of US auto companies is their apparently ingrained belief that their industry doesn't change. You hear it from their laid-off workers all the time -- "I thought I would always have a job here. My father worked at this plant, and his father, and ...." The fundamental reasons for Toyota's success are that they expect the market to change, they have a good vision of where that change is going, and they act on that vision, by investing in R&D on the products of the future.

I have mixed opinions of Unions - while on the one respect, they can negotiate salaries, hours, keep jobs local and whatnot, but they also make it nearly impossible to save a company when it's in trouble due to those same contracts. Let me just sum it up - non-union Toyota is the #1 auto maker right now and financially looking very good. Former #1 GM is cash strapped and facing bankruptcy. Which do you think has more job security right now?

Depending on how Unions collect fees, you can absolutely get screwed in low paying jobs (some take a percentage, while others charge a fixed fee). My only union job was one of these - I got screwed in Union dues because they charged a fixed $1/hour fee for anyone making less than $12/hour - I made state minimum wage for large employers at that time working for the school paper, but all the jobs at the school paper were union jobs (but actually comprised several unions - I think I was something like the Clerical Workers Union) and I was in the lowest paying position and made $4.25 an hour - that's $4.25/hour, minus taxes, minus fee, which left me with $2 and change for every hour worked. The job was fine, but I couldn't handle the fees - I quit after a month and got a campus non-union clerical job and doubled my take home pay (it paid a base $5.50) and was, in fact, easier work. Now admittedly, I believe the union failed the worker in that case, and it is my fault for taking a crappy job as well, but I was desperate and it was on-campus so I saved myself gas money, and honestly, I didn't realize the union dues would be so high because they didn't mention it. It was only the second job I had ever worked in my life, so it definitely was an educational experience.

I'll start taking you "Green is BS" people a little more seriously when you stop using your FUD.

Well, as long as you asked me to look it up, and because you just had to take my general statement and turn it into a specific instance, well then okay -- here you go. Word from Toyota itself stating that most emission ratings are higher in the Prius than gasoline powered vehicles -- with exception only to the driving cycle.

In plain english, your champion green car is less green to produce than those evil gas burning cars.

I agree, the 2000 sales numbers were small (Only 5,800 North American sales during year 2000, according to sales numbers at http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/news/08/0515.html ).

The pre-2003 Prius's came with a 7 year battery warranty, if I remember right. Toyota sold about 60,000 Prius' by 2004. If the batteries failed and Toyota refused to replace them, then where are the angry customers? Early adopters tend to be passionate, and I would expect to hear more about a failure.

Here in Berkeley (land of Volvo, Honda & Prius), we probably have several thousand of the pre-2004 models (I see them multiple times per day). I know several people with a year 2000 Prius, and they rarely take their car to the shop (mostly out of neglect). The cars are working better then my Ford. If the batteries failed often, then I would expect this to come up in conversation.

"With this winglet's 6km/h speed bicycle is also much faster...."

6km/h = 3.7mph

3.7mph is a fast walk, and remember that's maximum top speed (so it probably only gets that going downhill) and I'm sure that's if the passenger is a ideal weight, but the release doesn't disclose weight limit.

I have a feeling people will be walking pass people riding on these so I think they'll have a hard time selling them if they're more than $100. Even the $99 electric scooter @ Walmart does 10mph so who'd want a Segaway doing 3.7mph?

They aren't worried. This is typical of a "full disclosure" of risks that companies give to their investors.

Exactly. I don't think this is new or unique to McAffee. I used to have McAfee stock (via a chain of options from a former employer, buyouts, and restructuring) and I think I remember seeing a similar warning.

Annual reports are full of "the sky might fall and negatively affect earnings" sort of disclaimers. Toyota's annual report, for example, warns that "Toyota may be adversely affected by political instabilities, fuel shortages or interruptions in transportation systems, natural calamities, wars, terrorism and labor strikes."

Based on this:

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/ir/stock/outline.html

if GM owns any of Toyota, they own less than 60 million shares(which is ~1.6%), or do it very indirectly. I wasn't under the impression that the companies had any relationship at all. Err, that is, I was under the impression that they were separate(except maybe for some research programs or whatever, but their operations are separate).

My original reply was because somebody had modded up the post, so it seemed worth throwing in some dissent, but not worth going to extreme lengths to do it. I have to agree about the entanglements being a bit of a chore and barely worth looking into, and that it doesn't really matter where a car gets made(or really, who owns the factory).

Actually I was thinking about the Insight not the EV One.

Here is Toyota's own assessment. At 20K KM the fuel cost equals [Page 5] (Japanese are pretty much required to dump their car's at 100K KM). However the toxic emissions are pretty close all the way through [Page 6]. Again this depends on how much you drive your car and how you drive your car, 50MPH uses half the fuel of 70MPH. You missed the most important part, if you use cabs/bicycles/public transit combined with a car share service membership you will have much less of an impact that you would if you owned your own anything.

Well, you should go take a look at Toyota's own assessment before getting out the conspiracy theories and claiming "common sense":

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/k_forum/tenji/pdf/pgr_e .pdf
from http://wikicars.org/en/Toyota_Prius

Total energy used to produce the car and run it is only slightly better than an all gas model because initial energy requirements for a similar sized car is MUCH higher, something that goes contrary to "common sense".

That gets payed back over the years in better gas milage. The wikicar site will show you that in Japan the milage is 71mpg and Germany it is rated at 51mpg.

No conspiracy , just different methods of measuring MPG.

My next car will hopefully be a plug in desiel hybrid. They just have to start selling them here! The GM/Opal Astral would be my pick.

P.S. Use the return key or formatting.

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/about_toyota/manufactur ing/worldwide.html

really, you can't have it both ways.

If you don't want jobs to go overseas then be consistent and complain when foreign companies create jobs that were not there in your own country...

According to Toyota - and the company is commendably frank about its car's environmental equations - Prius doesn't even begin to break even on greenhouse gas emissions until it's been driven around 20,000km. This is because extracting and manufacturing the raw materials to make a Prius consumes more energy than a conventional car. The extra energy required means more carbon dioxide is emitted to make a Prius than a conventional technology car.

So no, hybrid cars don't grow on trees, but they do win in the end on total emission. Toyota cars are known for their reliability (the main German automobile organization have found toyota to be the top reliable car for years in a row already), so expect them to overcome this 20.000 km barrier many, many times over. (estimated battery life seems to be about 160.000km at minimum).

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/news/03/0724.html
apparently you've never heard of bio-plastic. yes, good old plant esters can be converted into plastics too. it's just been really expensive to do so. and it's not going to get any cheaper until people demand the stuff in volume.
the extent of the 'addiction' to oil has prevented technolgies that could have 'saved' us 30 years ago (when the us oil production 'peaked' prior to new technolgies being developed) such as wide scale algea farming. do you realize how much say, desert region could be converted into a continuous algea production center? a lot. and that was just the 'on land production' they were considering in the 70's algea grows in water, cheap ways of making water more 'algea friendly' to allow rapid growth fields of the stuff over deep water would greatly increase the amount of energy we can utilize that comes from the sun.

done right algea oil might be cheaper than petrolium. afterall harvesting something off the surface should cost a lot less than drilling very deep holes to pump stuff out of the ground, and diesel engines can be converted to run on straight up veggie oil, so the energy costs in comparisions to 'cracking' petrolium hydrocarbons is far far lower. but the $ needed to design, test, and deploy a global algea field capable of replacing the 'oil' addiction would be staggering, just the capital required to replace the Us oil needs would run in the billions. and wehn all is said and done we don't even know if it would be 'cheaper' than pertolium. what if it can replace the oil addiction but is 3 times as expensive? what then?

Toyota has designed the battery pack of the Prius to be totally recyclable. Also the battery pack is covered under warrenty for 8 years 100,000 miles

I just got back from Tokyo where we visited Toyota's "Mega Web" building that is a cross betwen an auto dealership and a "world of tomorrow" exhibit. One entire section is devoted to the models and modifications of their cars that assist the handicapped and elderly.

They also had the outragous concept cars and transport devices such as the i-unit.

it took a 10 second google search for "hybrid battery disposal" to find these three results on the first page:

toyota's recycling initiatives
hybridcars.com's FAQ
treehugger.com article with some good resource links

seriously, man, use your noodle.

Corporations which cause a lot of pollution would be hurt by added environmental requirements, since they would have to pay to upgrade their factories, use more expensive techniques, etc.

But, you are absolutely right that this will also create new industries which produce such environmentally-friendly equipment, etc.

What I think the corporations need to do is ... innovate in the areas of energy efficiency.

Getting back to the hybrid topic, Toyota is a great example of this. In 1993 (I think) they announced their "Earth charter", which lead to the creation of their hybrid engine. The goal of the project was explicitly to design an environmentally-friendly car. And now it looks like it's paying off for them, big time. In 2000 they announced the beginning of their "New Earth Charter", in which they are researching not just ways to make a car that operates cleanly, but new manufacturing techniques to make it more friendly to build and ways to improve disposal. It sounds like they're really putting a lot of effort into it.

Some more details.

Meanwhile, car companies here in America are innovating in entirely different directions. :(

See the following URL for Toyota's GBOOK-compatible navigation system:

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/special/gbook/index.htm l

Here's the video feed of the robots in motion http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/special/robot/

It still takes all the same materials and manufacturing processes to build, and poses the same disposal problem once it wears out.

Well, at the risk of sounding like a Toyota ad, the Prius is built using 90% recyclable materials. For the soundproofing, they literally use shredded material from old cars. They use a tenth of the lead and a tenth of the PVC they were using in their cars in 1996. They even use plant-derived bioplastic for the floor mats.

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/news/03/0901a.html

A pilotable, actually walking robot will be showcased during the World Exposition 2005 here in Aichi, Japan. They showed clips of it walking on the news here in Japan.

A picture of the i-foot robot.

Toyota's press release on the robots showcased at Expo 2005 along with videos

More info can be found here.

Put two and two together!

This stuff is reall amazing. I think of what they are doing now as what computing was in the 40s and 50s. The next 20-50 years we are going to see some pretty amazing stuff going on.
If now is the "digital age" I'd say fifty years from now will be the "bio age" or some other stupid buzz phrase like that. Regardless it will be really interesting to see what develops. Also it will be a lot less clear-cut ethically and morally than the digital revolution. Machines are one thing, but playing around with genes and biomechanical interfaces are in a totally different realm.

Still what will be able to be done is going to change a lot of people's lives.
Think of taking somebody like Steven Hawkings and plugging his brain into a computer and put him in one of these (no, not the trumpet robot...scroll down halfway).
Pong today...Robot "leg-chairs" and voice generation tomorrow. The real boon will be when they figure out how to produce tactile feebback to accompany the control mechanisms.
For someone with a "locked-in" syndrome like ALS this would do wonders.

Almost makes me want to go do a CS/Neuroscience PhD or something like that after I finish med school. Well...almost, but I think I'll stick to the straight doctoring. I'm 7 years from now when I get done I won't want to go anywhere near school for the rest of my life!

The walker robot has a mounting/dismounting mode: http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/news/04/1203_1d.html/

You tool, if you bothered to actually check the link in the article.

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/news/04/1203_1d.html

Apparently, they will be distributing free LSD.

3. Producer/Show Director

Yves Pépin Profile

Born in France in 1943, Pépin is known for his fantastic, grand-scale productions. Head of the Paris-based production company eca2, he has successfully executed numerous multimedia and large-scale programs at various global events, expositions and theme parks.

Pépin's representative works include the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1998 World Cup in France and the 1999-2000 Millennium Celebration spectacle at the Eiffel Tower.

Aside from that, the assisted mobility thing is going to be a big, big market in the next couple of decades as the baby boomers start hitting the wall (assuming they aren't actually staring down an extra 900 years of life by then). While I seriously hope it won't look much like this given my natural fear of old people in silver spandex, I think we will see a lot of advancement in this field as the money shifts in that direction.

It's not just limited to mobility, either -- picture a recorder that is always working and allows you to privately review what just happened in your spare moments to aid memory? Heh, maybe you could even mark off when you've told a particular story to spare your loved ones the constant retelling...

A positronic brain, of course.

Seriously, robots tend to have at least one of the following characteristics (and examples):

1. Humanoid Shape - Everything from battlemechs to service robots.
2. A.I. - Data) and HAL 9000
3. Manipulators (hands/arms) - Canadarm and Canadarm 2
4. Remote (bomb disposal) or Autonomous (Predator UAV) Operation

You have to look at production capacity as well. Out of the 2.0 million cars Toyota sold in North America in 2003, 1.3 million were made in North America. Out of its 6.0 million card production capacity, 22% of it is in North America. For Honda, 80% of its North American sales are made in North America.

In any case, I wasn't trying to make some sort of point about Toyota keeping jobs in the US. My point was that Toyota and other foreign car manufacturers are beat our car industry, even though they're not taking advantage of cheap labor to do it. Take a look at Their production numbers. 88% of those are in high-cost regions like the North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Thus, they can't be taking advantage of cheap third-world labor to out-compete us. Instead, they simply seem to be better at building cars then we are. My point is that we've got a lot more problems than outsourcing. If outsourcing destroys the American middle class, it'll be because there is nothing else that the American middle class is good at.

• TOYOTA's Press Release
  
• TOYOTA PARTNER ROBOT Page(movie)
  
• Movie(WMP)
• Movie(Real)

Others Robotics sites

• TMSUK T-52(Movie)
• HAL(Hybrid Assistive Leg)
• Bipedal Locomotor WL-16

• TOYOTA's Press Release
  
• TOYOTA PARTNER ROBOT Page(movie)
  
• Movie(WMP)
• Movie(Real)

Others Robotics sites

• TMSUK T-52(Movie)
• HAL(Hybrid Assistive Leg)
• Bipedal Locomotor WL-16

Ditto... the Toyota website has some video clips (haven't watched them) but it states underneath that "Music is unavailable in accordance with copyright protection."

Typical...

Go here to check 'em out.

Toyota's robot site is here. It has movies of the robot. Evidently, they won't put out one with the sound because of copyright issues. I was really interested to hear it play, since I play the trumpet myself.

GF.

Ooo.. found the real homepage :

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/special/robot/

See it walk here

http://www.toyota.co.jp/company/prius/advanced_eq/ pop_ipa.html

I think its Corolla. Corona is a beer

...and is, or, at least, was at one time, a Toyota model name as well.

So is Celsior, but it's called a "Lexus LS400" in North America.