Within the early Nineties, Toyota noticed that environmental consciousness and tighter emissions rules would form the way forward for the automotive trade. The corporate aimed to create an eco-friendly, environment friendly automobile that might meet future requirements.
In 1997 Toyota launched the Prius to the Japanese market. The automotive was the world’s first mass-produced hybrid automobile that mixed gasoline and electrical energy to scale back gas consumption and emissions. Its worldwide debut got here in 2000.
Creating the Prius posed important technical and market challenges that included designing an environment friendly hybrid energy prepare, managing battery know-how, and overcoming client skepticism about combining an electrical drivetrain system with the usual gasoline-fueled energy prepare. Toyota persevered, nonetheless, and its instincts proved prescient and transformative.
“The Prius shouldn’t be solely the world’s first mass-produced hybrid automotive, however its technical and business success additionally spurred different automakers to speed up hybrid automobile improvement,” says IEEE Member Nobuo Kawaguchi, a professor within the computational science and engineering division at Nagoya College’s Graduate Faculty of Engineering, in Japan. He’s additionally secretary of the IEEE Nagoya Part. “The Prius helped form the function of hybrid automobiles in at present’s automotive market.”
The Prius was honored with an IEEE Milestone on 30 October throughout a ceremony held at firm headquarters in Toyota Metropolis, Japan.
The G21 mission
The event of the Prius started in 1993 with the G21 mission, which centered on gas effectivity, low emissions, and affordability. In keeping with a Toyota article detailing the mission’s historical past, by 1997, Toyota engineers—together with Takeshi Uchiyamada, who has since grow to be generally known as the “father of the Prius”—had been happy they’d met the problem of reaching all three objectives.
The primary-generation Prius featured a compact design with aerodynamic effectivity. Its groundbreaking hybrid system enabled clean transitions between an electrical motor powered by a nickel–metallic hydride battery and an inner combustion engine fueled by gasoline.
The automotive’s design integrated regenerative braking within the power-train association to boost the automobile’s power effectivity. Regenerative braking captures the kinetic power sometimes misplaced as warmth when typical brake pads cease the wheels with friction. As an alternative, the electrical motor switches over to generator mode in order that the wheels drive the motor in reverse reasonably than the motor driving the wheels. Utilizing the motor as a generator slows the automotive and converts the kinetic power into {an electrical} cost routed to the battery to recharge it.
“The Prius shouldn’t be solely the world’s first mass-produced hybrid automotive, however its technical and business success additionally spurred different automakers to speed up hybrid automobile improvement.” —Nobuo Kawaguchi, IEEE Nagoya Part secretary
In keeping with the corporate’s “Harnessing Effectivity: A Deep Dive Into Toyota’s Hybrid Expertise” article, a breakthrough was the Hybrid Synergy Drive, a system that enables the Prius to function in numerous modes—electrical solely, gasoline solely, or a mixture—relying on driving circumstances.
A key element Toyota engineers developed from scratch was the facility break up machine, a planetary gear system that enables clean transitions between electrical and gasoline energy, allowing the engine and the motor to propel the automobile of their respective optimum efficiency ranges. The association helps optimize gas economic system and simplifies the drivetrain by making a standard transmission pointless.
Setting fuel-efficiency information
Practically 30 years after its business debut, the Prius stays an icon of environmental accountability mixed with technical innovation. It’s nonetheless setting information for gas effectivity. When in July 2023 the newly launched 2024 Prius LE was pushed from Los Angeles to New York Metropolis, it consumed a miserly 2.52 liters of gasoline per 100 kilometers through the 5,150-km cross-country journey. The report was set by a so-called hypermiler, a driver who practices superior driving strategies aimed toward optimizing gas effectivity. Hypermilers speed up easily and keep away from exhausting braking. They let off the accelerator early so the automotive can coast to a gradual cease with out making use of the brakes, and so they drive as usually as attainable at speeds between 72 and 105 km per hour, the velocities at which a automotive is usually best.
A driver not using such strategies nonetheless can anticipate gas economic system as excessive as 4.06 L per 100 km from the newest era of Prius fashions.
Toyota has superior the Prius’s hybrid know-how with every era, solidifying the automotive’s function as a frontrunner in gas effectivity and sustainability.
Milestone occasion attracts luminaries
Uchiyamada gave a short discuss on the IEEE Milestone occasion concerning the Prius’s improvement course of and the challenges he confronted as chief G21 engineer. Different notable attendees had been Takeshi Uehara, president of Toyota’s power-train firm; Toshio Fukuda, 2020 IEEE president; Isao Shirakawa, IEEE Japan Council historical past committee chair; and Jun Sato, IEEE Nagoya Part chair.
A plaque recognizing the know-how is displayed on the entrance of the Toyota Technical Heart, which is inside strolling distance of the corporate’s headquarters. It reads:
“In 1997 Toyota Motor Company developed the world’s first mass-produced hybrid automobile, the Toyota Prius, which used each an inner combustion engine and two electrical motors. This automobile achieved revolutionary gas effectivity by recovering and reusing power beforehand misplaced whereas driving. Its success helped popularize hybrid autos internationally, superior the know-how important for electrical energy trains, contributed to the discount of CO2 emissions, and influenced the design of subsequent electrified autos.”
Administered by the IEEE Historical past Heart and supported by donors, the Milestone program acknowledges excellent technical developments worldwide. The IEEE Nagoya Part sponsored the nomination.
