"Engineers Rule" and "The Toyota Way": How Toyota and Honda have bested the Big Three.
posted by rollbiz on Nov 25, 2008 - 131 comments

Saved by Zero Kills (slyt) [via Consumerist] [more inside]
posted by owtytrof on Nov 21, 2008 - 45 comments

Toyota has a "Segway killer" called the Winglet (still being refined) including a hands-free version steered with the knees. Test riders say its fun, but Toyota has not decided to commercialize it yet (ie. no price info). Segway owners weigh in.
posted by stbalbach on Aug 1, 2008 - 49 comments

"The Toyota Prius is much too powerful and luxurious a road car," thought Walter Mitty. "What I desire is a Zest Roadster. Pocketa-pocketa-pocketa."
posted by mr_crash_davis on Nov 27, 2007 - 33 comments

Ghost ridin da whip + Society for Creative Anachronism + viral marketing = RAV4 Jousting. Warning: flash, opera
posted by gottabefunky on Jan 31, 2007 - 27 comments

Workers in the U.S. South Too Uneducated to Build Cars? Automobile manufacturer Toyota announced that it would build a new car factory in Woodstock, Ontario, even though several US states offered greater subsidies and tax breaks to the company. The reason?

[M]uch of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project... Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

(Also a contributing factor -- Canada's national health service, which apparently drives down the overall cost of each individual worker.)

To be fair to the US South, the problem may be more apparent there because of the region's zealousness in competing for automobile factories. But the point remains -- Toyota is saying US workers are so poorly educated that it's not worth the effort to train them. Whom to blame? And how many more factory (and other) jobs will have to be lost to better-educated workforces in other countries before this pings on the national radar?
posted by jscalzi on Jul 3, 2005 - 87 comments

Lending a trunk , Sumatran elephants have been enlisted to search through the tsunami debris in Banda Aceh. Sure-footed, with a keen sense of smell, they can find bodies still buried in rubble; Medang, who can lift 3 tons, pulled a tree off a Toyota. Here are some Sumatran elephant photos and a bunch of elephant links, Sumatran and otherwise.
posted by Julie on Jan 22, 2005 - 3 comments

Now Toyota enters the robot race. Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, is such a splash, Toyota is entering the race, making robots designed to assist the elderly and incapacitated, and play trumpet with artificial lips. Shouldn't the US be making humanoid robots too? What do you really want your robot to do?
posted by kablam on Mar 14, 2004 - 21 comments

Manufacturing cars doesn't have to be a dirty business
Hats off to Toyota, which along with Honda, has a no-bullshit commitment to the environment.
posted by magullo on Jun 3, 2003 - 7 comments

Calling All Pod People: there's a car for you! "This concept car explores the potential for communication between people and their vehicle," Toyota said in preview information released on Thursday. I don't want to communicate with machines (using machines to communicate with other people is more my style). What is it about Japanese culture that produces all these machine-human "relationships"? Tamagotchi, Aibo, NeCoRo, ad nauseam.
posted by Carol Anne on Oct 18, 2001 - 22 comments

Like some people, I'm obsessed with traffic. I was very happy to hear that Toyota is developing chips to drive smart cars, since groups of people in cars can't seem to drive very well on their own. I've studied traffic for years (living in LA means lots of "time in the lab") and have actually tried no-stopping experiments and observed merging behavior. People seem to use their brakes too much, or over-react to people ahead tapping their brakes. I can't wait until the day traffic flow can be controlled by computer, LA might be livable again. Just to prove to others that this is in fact a thinly-veiled simpsons newsgroup, Homer and Bart benefited from similar driving-assistance technology in episode #AABF13.
posted by mathowie on Feb 9, 2000 - 2 comments