Met the Chief Designer of Prius II tonight...

Hi All,

My hubby and I just got back a bit ago from attending the Soka University's Earth Week presentation by Tomio Yamazaki (Chief Designer of Prius II & CFO of Calty Design Research, Inc.). The university was gracious enough to extend the opportunity to attend this interesting and informative talk to non-students.

It was a unique experience, part educational seminar, part commercial, part revival meeting and all good. Mr. Yamazaki gave a PowerPoint presentation that included photos of the Prius II (2004 to present model years) prototype model and of the production vehicle. I learned a couple things about my wonderful car that I had not known or noticed in my one-year of driving it. I didn't realize that the steering wheel is actually an oval not a circle to allow better visability of the dash instruments and that the gear shift lever lights up at night when the headlights are on. Silly me.

The audience was comprised predominately of students at the school but had a healthy dose of Prius owners as well. The San Diego and Orange County Prius clubs were well represented with both of thier respective organizers in attendance.

Mr. Yamazaki was kind enough to take questions from the audience at the conclusion of his talk. But a couple of the questions were fielded by Prius club members (at one point Mr. Yamazaki even genially deferred a question to one of the Prius club members to answer).

After the Q&A concluded, the students acknowledged the guests in attendance and even cited the cities they had traveled from to be there tonight. The students gave the owner's a rousing round of applause and then asked for everyone to stand together so that they could get a commemorative group picture with Mr. Yamazaki.

He was nice enough to even pose for pictures with folks after the presentation had been formally concluded and even bemusedly signed autographs on everything from Prius brochures to photo reproductions of the poster advertising the event to my car's owner's manual and my personal Prius mileage diary.

I told my hubby that he was kind of like the John Lennon of car designers -- a visionary and artist who helped to change the shape of things to come.

The funniest portion of the event to me was the aftermath when the students started asking the Prius owners and club members to pose for pictures either alone or with them. We were really treated like celebrities.

When all was said and done a few of us traipsed out in the drizzle to the parking lot to check out the McPeete's beautiful new '06 Barcelona Red pkg 8 and to compare goodies we have added to our cars to make them even more personal and special. I was especially impressed with the window decals that the McPeete's have on their car that mimic the window sticker and proclaim in big bold numbers the epa mileage for all to see.

All in all, this was a terrific event and I am grateful to have been given the chance to participate. Thank you to the Orange County Prius Club and the San Diego Prius club who were both johnny-on-the-spot with information and invitations when this opportunity came up.

Have a terrific day and take care all,

Tisza

 

Hi Again All,

Mr. Yamazaki now lives and works here in Newport Beach California for a different area of Toyota. When he was asked about when the Prius III would come out or if another redesign was in the offing he stayed silent for a really long beat, grinned softly and then said in a most polite way that he could not say anything about that.

He also spoke about the importance that the design team placed upon creating an interior and exterior space that was comfortable, functional, futureistic and "cozy". When he was displaying the original design drawings for the interior instrument panel he likened it to something from Star Wars.

He also talked about why it was important to move controls for almost every task the driver might engage in while operating the vehicle to the steering wheel pad to improve driver safety (less time with the eyes off the road).

I asked about when they might consider improving the comfort level of the seats (heating, lumbar support, more adjustability, powering) mostly because I have seen alot of discussion here on PriusChat about this. Personally, I find the seats in my car to be very comfortable but maybe it might be that I have a smaller frame and that I was so used to driving absolute pieces of dreck that I am not as picky.

I also asked about when or if they have any plans to add any other features like a sun or moon roof. Mr. Yamazaki said that the powered seats would indeed cause a small dip in fuel economy and that a sun roof is one of the things he is asked for most often. He did not give a definate answer on either score, but I suspect from his tone when answering the question that these things are somewhere on the Toyota drawing board for the future.

He did say that Toyota is aiming to produce a smaller, lighter lower priced vehicle that will get even better mileage in the future.

He explained that they have a philosophy of "Zero-ization and Maximization". Zero-ization refers to aiming to find ways of doing things that will have the most minimal negative impact on the environment and the world in general. By striving to design and build the most environmentally friendly and fuel efficient automobiles that they can provide, Toyota is trying to look at the bigger picture to help offer the world alternatives that make sense and cents.

Maximiaztion pertains to offering the most features, comfort and value that they can provide with the other goal firmly in mind and in the forefront of the design philosophy.

A few of the other questions that were asked were:

Why did they add the hybrid system into the existing Lexus body design and not create a specially designed Lexus branded hybrid. His answer basically boiled down to economics. It was more cost effective to do it that way to start.

I think it is probably because by integrating the hybrid synergy system into other preexisting vehicle lines that are not engineered specifically around this drive train, and are therefore not as revolutionary and "different" looking as the Prius, they will have the chance to better capture the market areas where being the first and different car on the block would not be seen as a good thing.

Camry owners love their Camry's (it is one of the top selling vehicles bar none), and I suspect that one of the things that they like about their cars is the consistancy of design and the conservative lines employed. Put them into a Camry that looks more like a Prius and some of them will probably squak a bit and could run to a more familier (read that less revolutionary) vehicle like a Honda Accord.

A question also came up about the lifespan of the hybrid vehicle. 300,000 miles or 15 years was alluded to. This was one of the questions that was fielded by the Prius owner's in the gallery. Cathy Margolin and Sev McPeete talked about the Prius taxi that had 300,000 miles on it when it was retired from service in Canada and bought back by Toyota to examine and study. The taxi driver received a nice new one in exchange.

I spoke up and echoed Dave Hermance's talk about how the reason that the battery's and hybrid system were warrantied for the period of time that they are is not because at the end of their warranty period (12 years here in California) they will cease functioning, but because after testing the systems for that period and longer with virtually no loss of productivity (the system and batteries still performed as they had when they were new) the just "got tired of testing".

Another student asked a rather longwinded and rambling question that had something to do with fossil fuels and globalization of the marketplace and ships and sails and sealing wax and carpenter's and kings but I really lost track of what he was trying to find out and the question went unanswered as Mr. Yamazaki lost track as well. Also, it was really more about the politics of the brand and not about the design so that would not be his area of expertise.

And last but not least, the $64,000 or is it $64,000,000 question was asked about the possibility of a plug in Prius. Mr. Yamazaki, thought about this question for a few minutes and then stated very diplomatically that they were looking at all sorts of different options including a diesel/electric hybrid. I didn't get the feeling that he was really hyped on the plug in idea.

Overall, the talk itself and the question and answer period that came after, were interesting but did not really tell us much about the future of these cars. It was more about what they did to create the car as it is now. Oh, and when asked what the redesign timeline was for the Prius II he said that it was about two years from start to finish.

I hope that this makes those of you who were not able to attend feel more like you were a fly on the wall here. I hope that he will give another talk sometime in the future. Perhaps if he was invited to a joint meeting of the LA, San Diego and Orange County Prius Club meetings he could be enticed to come and present his talk again.

Take care all and have a super day,

Tisza