No. 55: Local medium-sized companies collaborate to develop electric vehicles (July 31, 2010)

In Japan, the move that local medium-sized companies work together to develop electric vehicles (EVs) is spreading. This is because medium-sized companies that once enjoyed brisk business as subcontractors of big companies have been losing business volume because of the big companies’ trend to transfer their manufacturing plants in Southeast Asian countries. A local company in Osaka Prefecture will build a trial three-seat three-wheeled EV by March 2011 for mass production scheduled for 2012. It will specialize in fabrication using imported chassis and battery. The planned EV is designed for short distant shopping only and not designed for driving on an express highway. It runs at the maximum speed of 35 km/h and for 70 km per about six-hour charge. The price is scheduled at between 1 and 1.5 million yen. A total of 23 medium-sized companies participate in the project. The competition in the EV development is growing harder, and big companies including Toyota are energetically developing EVs. It is, therefore, advisable for the group of medium-sized companies to focus on the zippy model positioned between car and bicycle because it is hardly possible to compete with big companies in EVs that replace the gasoline-powered vehicle. In addition, a facilitator from the third party, such as government agency and local municipality, is indispensable because each participant has its own interest. The price range should be between 1 and 1.5 million yen. It is advisable not to touch on the EV that costs more than 1.5 million yen, leaving the domain of such expensive EVs to big companies.

No. 54: Photovoltaic generation spreads among restaurants and convenience stores (July 30, 2010)

A nationwide coffee shop chain decided to install a photovoltaic generation system in its new shop to supply 5% of its power demand by photovoltaic generation and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The investment is three million yen, and it is scheduled to be recouped within 10 years. A nationwide restaurant chain introduced solar water heaters to reduce utility cost. Because restaurant chains are not as financially strong as nationwide major retail chains, they are behind in energy saving measures. However, it has become easier for restaurant chains to introduce photovoltaic generation, because the policy to ask electric power companies to purchase power at two times as high as in the past was enacted last fall and because an increasing number of municipalities provide a subsidy to companies that install a photovoltaic generation system. Convenience store chains are very energetic to install a photovoltaic generation system. Family Mart will increase the number of stores with the system from the present 10 stores to 300 stores by 2012, and Seven-Eleven plans to double the number of stores with the system to 200 by next spring. The Japanese government plans to increase photovoltaic generation by 20 times to 28 million kW toward 2020. Backed up by the inspiring government policy, the move to introduce photovoltaic generation is expected to intensify among restaurant and retail chains in Japan.

Office best suitable for biological clock

Takenaka Corp., one of Japan’s leading construction companies, has developed an office that minimizes the error of the biological clock that controls the cycle of brain activation. The office controls Takenaka’s self-developed intensity of illumination and room temperature, sets the biological clock of office workers, and helps them have a deep sleep. The company plans to commercialize this office in three years as the technology to improve the productivity of office workers liable to have an irregular working pattern. Focusing attention on the circadian rhythm, it developed the technology to select the intensity of illumination and control the operation of air-conditioning in accordance with the circadian rhythm.

Takenaka adopted two kinds of LEDs of orange and white. The office uses the two colors, but orange grows stronger toward the evening. It is 400 lx in the day time and less than 300 lx after the evening. The illumination is covered by film after the evening to integrate it with the ceiling, and the film makes the whole ceiling brighter by diffusing the light coming out through the film. The system sets the temperature of the air-conditioning at 3 degrees centigrade higher than the room temperature to increase the deep body temperature, thereby enlarges the vibration amplitude subject to the circadian rhythm. This technology helps office workers have a good sleep and improve their rhythm of sleep and waking state.

Hitachi Zosen goes into the large-scale fuel cell business.

Hitachi Zosen announced that it would go into the large-scale fuel cell business toward 2014 in alliance with Wartsila of Finland. The large-scale fuel cell to be built by the two companies will have power generation efficiency of 50-70% that is about two times as high as that of the existing model and sold to manufacturing plants and buildings. The company is scheduled to launch the testing machine of the state-of-the-art fuel cell called solid-oxide fuel cell within the year. It changed the substance used in generation part from polymer molecule to solid ceramic, and it is expected to increase the power generation efficiency to 50-70% and output of power generation by 10 times. The two companies will collaborate in product development and substantiative experiments. Fuel cells do not emit carbon dioxide, but the high generation cost should be solved to spread fuel cells. According to a survey, the current domestic solid-oxide fuel cell market is about 800 million yen, but it will be 250 billion yen in 2025.

Carbon fiber material for auto body

Tokyo University successfully developed a carbon fiber material for auto body jointly with Toray, Toyobo, and Mitsubishi Rayon. The newly-developed material has 10 times as much strength as iron and weighs one fourth of iron. It can be moulded in a short time, and it allows for deformation and agglutination. It can be applied to various part of a car including auto body and engine parts. The university will collaborate with Toyota, Nissan, and Honda to establish the mass production technology of this material. To develop this material, the university used carbon fiber and thermoplastic resin to solidify it and improved the surface of carbon fiber to make it become easily attached to resin. It took this new material only two minutes to be processed after it is moulded in a mold. If the processing is automated, it is supposedly possible to process this material in one minute that is the time used to produce a metal part of mass-produced cars. It will offer a wide range of applications including door frame and engine parts. In addition, it can be applied to other industries than the auto industry because you can purchase a block of this material and process it to build favorable shapes.

A new high-rise building with a recycling system

Takenaka Corp., one of Japan’s general constructors, will build a new high-rise building in Osaka. It will be Japan’s highest building when it is completed in 2014. It is 300 meters high and 60-storied, and it is equipped with a system to recycle food scraps and discharged water. Using pipes with a length of 400 meters, the system produces biogases from food scraps coming from restaurants inside the building and uses them for air-conditioning and hot-water supply. The company developed the urban biogas system in collaboration with an environment solution company. The recycling system sends food scraps produced by restaurants to the basement using the pipes and process them in the fermenter to make methane gases. And the gases will be used for the cogeneration system and boilers. The discharged water from hotel rooms and bathrooms will also be reused. The new building is scheduled to discharge three tons of food scraps daily, and the daily amount of discharged water is scheduled at 700 tons from restaurants and 550 tons from bathrooms. The biogas system will generate electricity equivalent to the amount consumed by 100 households. This self-contained building will supposedly grow widespread in the future.

On electric vehicle

Advanced countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 in last year’s G8 Summit. Clearly, this is not a target that can be achieved easily. However, the two driving force are helpful to realize this difficult-to-achieve target. They are electric vehicle (EV) and photovoltaic generation. It is vital to restructure a society using these two technologies that have unlimited potential, and the restructuring asks consumer-electronics makers to expand their business domains. It may become a reality that the largest home electric appliance is an EV some time in the future.

Low entry barrier
There are about 60 million vehicles in Japan and more than 1 billion vehicles in the world today, and they all are supposed to be replaced by EVs in several decades. EVs can contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions if photovoltaic generation and wind generation are used for charging. In the days of gasoline vehicles, entry barrier is really high because lots of investments are needed for manufacturing plants and development costs. However, EVs do not large amount of investments, and venture companies and home electronics makers can find business opportunities. Tesla Motors in the U.S. succeeded in mass production of its roadster in 2008, just five years after the company was founded. Mounting a Japanese lithium iron battery, it has better acceleration than a Porsche.

Tesla’s innovation
Tesla achieved two innovations. First, they changed the structure of the auto industry from integration to assembling. Tesla roadster is assembled using parts coming from various parts of the world. The auto body comes from England, battery from Japan, and motor from Taiwan. And the roadster is assembled in California. Second, they established the combinatorial technology. Although they do not have their own elemental technology, they constructed an inexpensive and highly reliable battery system by developing the control technology using the general-purpose battery stored in a notebook PC. They also employed a general-purpose tri-phase current induction motor instead of a permanent magnet synchronous motor that uses an expensive scarce resource neodymium.

Competitors in the market
A Chinese battery maker and a Korean vehicle make also move into the EV market. Japanese automakers are also active, and Nissan is scheduled to launch its electric vehicle Leaf coming October. From a comprehensive viewpoint, Japanese auto makers excel the three companies mentioned above. It took Tesla two years to ship 1,000 roadsters, while late entrant Mitsubishi Motors needed only half a year to ship 1,000 EVs. Nissan plans to ship 50,000 Leaf EVs in the initial year. Actually, Nissan is most active in developing EVs. Nissan decided to invest US$1,700 million to build a new plant to produce batteries for its EV “Leaf.” Nissan already received 13,000 advance orders for Leaf. Toyota announced the capital and business alliance with Tesla Motors. Nissan believes that EVs will account for 10% of vehicles on the earth, saying that it costs US$50 to fill a gasoline tank of a standard car, but it costs only US$3 to charge an EV. The difference is enormous. Nissan announced that it opened up the way to develop a lithium ion battery that has two times as much capacity as the exiting product. It allows an EV to travel 300 km that is double the distance the existing car can cover in one charge.

Moves of Japanese home electronics makers toward electric vehicle
As contrast to auto makers, home electronics makers are somewhat quiet. Lithium ion battery is the most critical part of an EV. Japanese home electronics makers, such as Sanyo, Sony, and Panasonic, have an established position in the production of lithium batteries. Tesla admitted that it employs a Japanese lithium ion battery for its roadster, though it declined to disclose the name of the producer. It is vital to employ a highly reliable lithium ion battery to achieve success in the EV business. Home electronics makers seem to have great potential of success in finished EV production. No Japanese home electronics makers have branched out into EV production, but leading home electronics makers have been playing a leading role in the development of EV.

Panasonic supplies lithium ion batteries to Toyota’s plug-in hybrid EVs. It developed a new battery module that uses lithium ion battery in October 2009. This battery module contributes much to the increase of travel distance and reduction of the production cost of an EV. In November 2009, Sanyo made it public that it would commercialize the battery module that Panasonic developed. Sony is a leading lithium ion battery producer worldwide. The company once announced that it would not produce batteries for cars, but it has decided to produce batteries for EVs judging from the growing popularity of EVs. It will invest 100 billion yen to build the system for mass production. Sony is reportedly negotiating with several auto makers.

Hitachi does not build a completed car by itself, but it has been producing lots of auto parts. It first succeeded in producing domestic electronic components for cars for the first time in Japan in 1930. It expanded the auto-related business constantly, and span off the lithium ion battery production division in 2004. Hitachi has competitive edge in the production of power semiconductors and the ability to prepare in-house core parts and components for EVs.

Home electronic makers’ efforts to associate EVs with smart grid
Besides being involved in the EV business, home electronic makers can help conserve energy by constructing efficient equipment for transmission and transformation of electricity. The smart grid is to reform the power grid to be more efficient and decentralized using information technology and allow for energy exchange between households and power plants. That is, the concept of smart grid covers solar house, mega solar, wind generation, existing power plants, and small regional power plants for emergency use. Actually, lots of business opportunities are available for home electric makers. In this sense, EVs may be built by home electric makers in the near future. Auto makers and home electronics makers will compete in the EV market. Be alert! Competitors come in from the unforeseeable business arena.