Tokyo Motor Show turning "green"?

Surprised? I wouldn't be posting anything about Tokyo Motor Show, unless this Reuters story with the title Clean, Quirky Cars to Dominate Tokyo Motor Show had caught my attention. Eco-friendly cars? Green products? "Biodegradable fibres and plastics"? The theme for this year's show is 'Driving Tomorrow!' from Tokyo. With oil prices soaring, it seems Japanese car makers are once again at the front line to give consumers what they didn't yet know they wanted.

JAMA, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, explains what happened after the oil crisis of 1973:

Between 1975 and 1985, the competition between small passenger cars and popularly-priced mini vehicles was the driving force behind new product development and market expansion. Small passenger car sales took the lead in the aftermath of the oil crisis, because new models were developed that complied with the government's strict exhaust emissions regulations and were also very competitively priced.

The JAMA website also has a special section on the environment, that describes how the Japanese car industry managed to comply with the strictest emissions regulations in the world:

...the government's 1978 Emissions Control Standard stipulated a reduction of NOx emissions to 0.25 g/km. Coming so soon after the implementation of a whole string of other new regulations, the 1978 standard presented an enormous challenge to manufacturers. With massive research and development efforts, they were finally able to comply with government regulations by introducing platinum-based catalytic converters and lean-burn engines.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War

マーティンの鵜の目鷹の目 -世界の消費者運動の旅から

Salvador Dali, Hiroshima and Okinawa