Let's Japan.org Debunking Eikaiwa and Ramblings in Japan

Recently, the Japan Electric Vehicle Club set a record for an electric vehicle (EV) by driving over 1,000 km on a single charge. The English version of the Asahi reported it as thus:

The Japan Electric Vehicle Club drove its test car 1,003.184 kilometers, far outstripping its own previous world record of 555.6 km.

The group will apply to register the new record with Guinness World Records.

The new record was set with the "Mira EV," a minivehicle made by Daihatsu Motor Co. and modified by the club. It was equipped with 8,320 cylindrical lithium-ion batteries produced by Sanyo Electric Co.

The minivehicle circled the 689-meter circuit at Tsukuba Circuit in this city 1,456 times in about 27 hours and 30 minutes from Saturday to Sunday.

The Telegraph also praised the achievement:

The achievement is timely: Japan and other nations are bracing themselves for an electric car boom as car manufacturers race to produce competitive versions of the environmentally-friendly vehicles.

However, the biggest inconveniences for many potential e-car owners relate to charging – from finding a nearby charger to making sure that the car does not run out of power during the school run.

The latest epic electric vehicle drive of over 1,000km effortlessly beat the previous world record of uncharged driving 555.6km, which was achieved last November by the same Japanese organisation.

However, there are gaping holes in both stories. The Japanese version in the Asahi shimbun contained far more detail, particularly this:

挑戦するＥＶは、もちろん、ミラＥＶだ。１０００ｋｍに挑戦するにあたり、徹底して車両を軽くした。２人乗りシートを約４０キロ軽い超軽量タイプに取り換え、転がり抵抗を軽くするタイヤを採用した。

そして、ドライバーをどうするか。舘内代表が１人でハンドルを握り続けた東京－大阪間よりも長時間の挑戦になるため、今回は舘内代表や自動車ジャーナリスト、関係者ら１７人が約１時間ずつ交代して記録に挑んだ。

２２日午前１１時スタートしたミラＥＶは、電圧低下で３０分間中断するというトラブルに見舞われながら未明のコースをひたすら走り続けた。夜が明けた翌２３日午後８時過ぎ、今度は雨が降り始めた。雨が降ると路面の走行抵抗が増す。ＥＶにとっては大敵だ。「こりゃ、大きなマイナスだな」。次第に雨脚が強くなり、ＥＶクラブの関係者が詰めていた本部席からため息が漏れた。

　記録挑戦に参加したドライバーたちは運転席で速度計と電流計をみながら、一定の速度で走るのに全神経を集中した。中にはアクセルを微妙に操作するため裸足でペダルを踏む人もいた。

　

ミラＥＶのハンドルを２回握ったモータージャーナリストの竹岡圭さんは、二度目の挑戦時は雨に見舞われた。電力消費を抑えようと、ワイパーを使うのは１周２回に抑えた。「同じスピードで走っても２回目は多くの電力が必要だった。電池切れしないようにアクセルを踏み過ぎないように心がけた。まるで『修行』のような走りでした」と振り返る。

They fitted the car with ultra light seats for a weight savings of 40kg and used special tires to reduce rolling resistance. It started raining, which increased rolling resistance. To save power, drivers only switched on the windshield wipers two times per lap. Lap being a key word here as they were driving on a closed test track with no need to switch gears or touch the brakes. They also had a light touch on the accelerator to keep the car at a steady 40km/h.

For the Telegraph to call this an "epic drive" that "effortlessly" broke the previous record is pure BS. It's also bad that the Asahi whittled the English version down to be utterly meaningless. Sure, a distance record was broken, but the group went to great lengths to control the driving environment and modify the car. This isn't as big a deal as the newspapers are making it out to be. EVs may be sexy technology but their practicality is still very limited. l'll be impressed when EVs can drive 1,000km under real conditions: traffic jams, bad weather, uneven acceleration and deceleration, poorly inflated tires, a full passenger load, plus groceries and other assorted junk loaded in the back.

For the past while, I've been seeing reports on TV and in the newspapers about the danger of hybrid vehicles being too quiet when running on battery power at low speeds. This isn't something new, but as more hybrids take to the roads, pedestrians are worrying about their safety. The Japan Times reported on it last month:

One of the virtues of owning a hybrid or electric car is its super-quiet noise signature. But worries are growing that blind people are being endangered by the vehicles' silence.

The government has set up a panel involving automakers, consumer groups and organizations for the blind to find a solution, which could lead to the emission of virtual engine noise or sounds similar to cell phone ring tones, officials said.

A legal change would be needed to equip the vehicles with the special noise-making feature.

As for the panel, documents from the their initial meeting suggest that it's not clear a serious problem even exists. One document [PDF] points out that automakers have received 60 inquiries about the quietness of hybrids over the past 4 years. A sampling of the comments suggests the silence of the cars is more of an annoyance than an danger with comments ranging from someone being startled by a hybrid silently creeping up next to them to the hope that hybrids get some other device beside their horn to alert pedestrians.

The danger from quiet hybrids sounds overblown. First, it's not clear that a problem exists. Is the Prius really that quiet or it is the high ambient noise level that makes the car difficult to hear? Lord knows Japan's cities have a terrible noise pollution problem. It's also not clear how mandating that hybrids make a fake engine noise or emit a chime increases safety when regular "noisy" cars aren't any less prone to running over people. Are the horns hybrids are equipped with not good enough to warn people? Is this really a problem with the car or with pedestrians and drivers failing to pay attention to their surroundings or drive with care?

Apart from their fuel economy, hybrid vehicles are an opportunity to reduce the noise pollution that surrounds us all day. The silence of hybrids should be a plus, not a problem. The transport ministry forgets that part of what makes the experience of pedestrian zones (hokosha tengoku) and other public places inviting and pleasurable is their absence of vehicles and the din of traffic. Rather than trying to find a way for pedestrians and cars to co-exist, perhaps the transport ministry should think about separating the two instead of applying a techno band-aid.

The fake engine noise requirement doesn't bode well for electric vehicles if and when they are mass produced. Will they have to make noise as well? The answer, at least in the U.S., seems to be, yes. Cue "car tones."

The truth about cheap highway tolls:

Last weekend we visited my wife’s family in Iwate prefecture 530 km (320 miles) north of Tokyo and paid only 1,700 yen ($17) one-way in tolls, much cheaper than the 10,000 yen that it would have cost on a weekday. The shinkansen (bullet train) would have set the four of us back almost 35,000 yen.

To beat the traffic we got up at the crack of dawn, loaded up the SUV with three days worth of clothes, diapers, and enough toys to occupy the kids, and hit the road at 6:30.

Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea. We immediately ran into heavy traffic on the Tohoku Expressway and crawled along around 40 km per hour through much of the first 100 km before things eased up a bit.

Just when we thought the worst was over, we hit a 25-km backup that looked like a parking lot. All we could do was grin and bear the bumper-to-bumper traffic as my 11-month-old son threw a fit in the back seat while my 5-year-old boy said: “Dad, we should have taken the shinkansen.”

I never wanted to get to my in-laws’ faster than at that moment.

We eventually made it in about 9-1/2 hours – more than three hours longer than it would have taken had there been no traffic jams.

“Next time, let’s not go on a 1,000-yen weekend,” my wife said.

And yet the public does this every year with the full knowledge that the roads will be clogged. But because they think they are getting a deal, they don't stop to think about the diminishing returns of cheap highway tolls: more people on the roads, longer traffic jams, and more time wasted sitting in traffic. It's interesting how people love a bargain but place so little value on their own time. It may be cheap to drive from Tokyo to Aomori for ¥1,000, but paying the extra money for shinkansen tickets to travel a lot quicker and more comfortably surely outweighs a 9-1/2 hour drive. This is something that even the author's child understands.