Toyota Boshoku was one of the participating companies whose booths strongly emphasized their commitment to sustainability. What especially caught our eyes in the booth was plant-based materials. One of those plant-based automobile materials is derived from the kenaf, an annual plant known for its rapid growth and its high capacity to absorb CO₂ while it grows. Toyota Boshoku has a proven track record of having had this material used for luxury cars for 20 years. Among the materials displayed at the exposition, this was one of the most outstanding ones for its novelty. Kenaf fiber is sturdy, lightweight, and effective in reducing CO₂ emissions across the entire life cycle of a car. Toyota Boshoku also showcased a very interesting, newly developed self-healing polymer. Made from plant seed oil, this is a miraculous polymer with a self-healing feature. When we tried tearing off a sample block of the material into pieces, they easily joined together just by being pressed against each other, giving us a feeling of wonder

The question of how to incorporate autonomous driving technology into society will offer us an opportunity to examine various themes, including the social role and significance of cars and the ethics of technology. Based on the principle of human-centric design, Mazda proposes a safety technology for cars that can work as a “copilot” when an abnormality happens to the driver and help him/her to prevent accidents. Sensors monitor the driver’s line of sight and driving operations. If they find the driver dozing or experiencing a physical abnormality, the system will assist in driving and stop the car in a safe place. After undergoing verification tests, the technology will start being used in mass-produced cars this fall. In the future, there will be further possibilities for the development of the technology, such as collaboration with medical institutions and the use of collected data for daily health maintenance.

At the exposition, Toyoda Gosei focused on appealing to Generation Z, who are highly conscious of the environment and value their own individualities. Especially eye-catching in the “sustainable-material car” placed at the center of the booth was a bag hook made from gingko shells, which embodies the concept of a “car connected with local communities.” Ginkgo nuts are a specialty of Inazawa City, Aichi Prefecture, where one of the company's plants is located. It is very significant and exciting that gingko shells have undergone an unexpected transformation into an automotive material in line with the company’s policy of effectively utilizing waste from the local community.
The Toyoda Gosei booth staff said that the company was conducting automotive R&D in view of the post-disposal stage to fulfill its responsibility as a manufacturer. Since even parts based on advanced technology do not last forever, the amount of used parts disposed of will continue to increase. Toyoda Gosei wants to explore what to do after disposal together with other companies and the general public. The booth staff gave a very impressive comment: “We hope to ensure that resources that have once entered Japan from abroad through our supply chain will be recycled forever for continuous use.”

Tokai Rika’s “intelligent cockpit,” has been developed based on the concept of “a cockpit monitoring the driver, understanding his/her intention, and responding appropriately to him/her.” We tried sitting in the cockpit packed with the company’s state-of-the-art technologies (sensors, AI, and algorithms). We found its non-contact system very interesting. When you want to operate the monitor, it approaches you in response to your hand gestures. When you reach out to look for something in the car, a spotlight shines on the spot your hand reaches. You can also open and close the glass roof just by waving your hand near the ceiling. You can thus operate various objects in the cockpit without touching anything. The company uses a skeleton detection technology to monitor the movement of human hands. This technology is capable of monitoring the movement of the whole body and therefore applicable to operational management at plants, for example. The Tokai Rika booth staff offered a very interesting comment: “We are exploring how to detect people’s intentions anticipatorily so that they can do various things with ease.”

DaikyoNishikawa’s booth was emblazoned with the slogan “FUTURE, WITH PLASTIC.” The booth featured various plastic automotive parts and technologies. Among them were new materials made from a mixture of plastic and waste especially close to the lives of people in Hiroshima, where the company is based, such as denim scraps, oyster shells, and rice chaff. The new materials were used effectively with the colors and texture of those raw materials incorporated into designs, inspiring our feeling of affinity and our expectations for the potential of plastic. The booth also displayed a concept model for a next-generation interior, which is planned to be applied to real cars around 2030. The highlight of the model was the application of so-called “Shy Tech” to a control panel and a display, which are hidden when they are not in use but appear through the interior surface when the surface is touched gently with a finger. The booth allowed us to imagine how delightful next-generation cars will be with a futuristic design and a new type of comfortable interior space.

Toyota Auto Body’s booth focused on the three pillars of the company’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality: the super-compact battery electric vehicle (BEV) COMS; fuel cell circuit parts technology; and the manufacture of products using plant-based materials. Interested in the third pillar in particular, we asked the Toyota Auto Body staff in charge about the plant-based materials’ ability to reduce CO₂ emissions across the entire life cycle of a car, which starts with the procurement of materials. The staff said that the company had researched and developed a resin material containing cedar wood from forest thinning in the local area with the original intention of using it as a made-in-Japan material for car models for the domestic market. The company has adopted a policy of manufacturing cars for overseas markets with wood that is gathered locally, from areas as near as possible to its production bases. When the staff present this initiative at the request of European companies interested in it, those companies highly value it as an initiative for the local consumption of local products. “Despite common misunderstanding, wood is actually highly heat-resistant and lightweight, so it is used in many applications that few people are aware of. Producing a car with many parts made of wood-derived materials will mean “making forests run.” We hope to make a lot of such cars to “make forests run in cities” while planting many trees in forests, thereby ensuring that forests will spread more widely around us,” the staff said about their dream.

In the exhibition zone for its electric powertrain system, Hitachi Astemo displayed in-wheel motors as an approach to providing a comfortable, large automotive interior space. Motors embedded in the wheels will help enlarge the interior space and provide greater freedom of body designs. This approach is also excellent in efficient energy use, transmitting the rotational energy of the motors directly to the wheels. The booth staff said that they still faced various technical hurdles to clear, including the need to make this technology more reliable in the face of vibrations from road surfaces and to resolve problems entailed by the integration of motor and wheel. They expressed their hope of continuing to conduct verification tests to ensure that this kind of in-wheel motor will be utilized in future EVs in an age of autonomous driving, providing us with a futuristic perspective.