Awesome Technology

Since 1993 I have been attending the Tokyo Motor Show every other year until the organizers decided to hold separate shows for passenger cars and motorcycles from commercial vehicles, trucks, buses and the like starting the year 2000. Since then Japan has been a yearly Mecca for this writer. I have Honda Cars Philippines, Toyota Motor Philippines and Mitsubishi Motors Philippines to thank for alternately hosting me, so I could be regularly updated on the latest technological advancements in the automotive field, which in turn I share with the viewers of our TV shows Motoring Today and Auto Focus and similarly with the readers of this column.

For this year’s staging, the strong suggestion for me to join the Honda motoring media contingent came from no less than former Honda Cars Philippines president, Mr. Koji Miyajima, as early as during his last visit to the Philippines in February. He has already retired from Honda Motor Company but has been appointed to a much higher and very influential position, which is that of a performance auditor of Honda’s directors and top executives. Some motoring journalists refer to Miyajima-san as the "Father of the CR-V in the Philippines" as he was actually responsible for bringing the "sales chart-busting" model by confidently convincing then Honda Motor Company president Mr. Nobuhiko Kawamoto, that the CR-V would be a sure winner in the local market, in the process putting his career on the line. It turned out he was right as the CR-V broke sales records and is still a top seller for HCPI.

The 2003 Tokyo Motor Show at the Makuhari Messe (Japan Convention Center) located at the Chiba Prefecture, which is about an hour’s ride from Tokyo, ends today after 12 days of public exhibition and two days exclusively for the local and international media.

With this year’s theme of "The Challenge: Driving Toward a Better Future", this 37th staging spotlights only on cars and bikes. The entire show occupies a floor area of a little over four hectares (41,559 square meters) featuring 263 companies from 13 countries and four governments (Canada, Germany, Sweden and US) displaying their products and services.

This now yearly experience never fails to awe me as I return back with a wealth of information regarding new technologies and breakthroughs that are all for the purpose of improving motoring and making it safer.

As a starter, did you know that a kind of technology that can predict rear-end collisions and assists brake operation to reduce impact on occupants and vehicle damage has already been developed?

Honda Motor Company., Ltd. has developed the world’s first Collision Mitigation Brake System (CMS), which determines the likelihood of a collision based on driving conditions, distance to the vehicle ahead, and relative speeds, and uses visual and audio warnings to prompt the driver to take preventive action. It can also initiate braking to reduce the vehicle’s speed. This new system will be installed in the new Inspire (a Honda car model) scheduled for release in Japan in June of this year, in combination with the "E-Pretensioner", which retracts the seatbelt in anticipation of impact.

The CMS and E-Pretensioner use a millimeter-wave radar to detect vehicles ahead within a range of 100 meters, and then calculate the distance between the vehicles, the relative vehicle speeds and the anticipated vehicle path to determine the likelihood of a collision. If the system determines that a collision is likely, it sounds a buzzer and provides a tactile warning, tightening the seatbelt to prompt the driver to take preventative action. The system also incorporates a number of functions to reduce impact on occupants in the event an impact is unavoidable, including a brake assist function that compensates for insufficient pedal pressure to reduce the speed of impact and seatbelt control that increases seatbelt tension to hold the driver more securely in place.

Together with the other members of the international media and those from the Philippines invited by Honda, I am also a living witness to attest that this system really works. It was at the Honda R&D at the Tochigi Center where we were all each given a chance to experience first hand this advance technological breakthrough to ensure added safety while driving. All the journalists were asked to drive a Honda Inspire equipped with the system and to follow another vehicle, an Odyssey, which carried with it in an attached long pole some sort of a hanging target that we are supposed to hit at a given speed of about 60 kph. As the car we were driving came close to the target, all the warnings signals — the buzzer, the flashing light and the firm tug of the seatbelt — audio, video and tactile, were manifested just before the impact on the target, together with the sudden decrease in the speed. During all of these we were asked not to step on the break, if only to highlight a point. Unfortunately, being an R&D facility, we were not allowed to make use of our cameras during this exercise.

But what we were allowed to take footage of and see by ourselves up close while at the Honda R&D facilities was one of their crash tests. The actual crash test was made to demonstrate Honda’s development of the New Crash Compatibility Body Frame Structure.

Honda has recently developed a crash compatibility body frame structure that provides greater safety in collisions between vehicles of differing size and weight. The new body design, which builds on Honda’s proprietary "G-Control" (G-CON) collision safety body technology, uses the engine compartment to efficiently disperse and absorb collision energy during a vehicle-to-vehicle collision, thus significantly improving self-protection while also reducing aggressivity toward other vehicles.

Honda will first use the new body design technology on the all-new Life mini-car (a Honda car model), which is scheduled for release in Japan this September. Honda also announced that in the future, during full model changeovers, vehicles built on new platforms would be equipped with the crash compatibility body design.

Honda’s new crash compatibility body employs a front-end frame structure that reduces the potential concentrated force of an impact by dispersing and absorbing crash energy over a large area — and does not easily become misaligned laterally or vertically with the frame of the other vehicle involve in the crash.

In my many years of attending technical presentations, many of which came on side trips either before or after a motor show, this crash test was my second; the first time was in a Toyota R&D facility some years back. Like in the first, all journalists were given ample time to ready their video equipment for the actual crash. A countdown was even actually made to make sure that all were ready to record such expensive demonstration, only for me to push on my video camera’s "off" switch instead of the zoom-in lever just before the actual impact. I was able to immediately switch my camera back to "on" but I don’t really know if I got on tape the actual impact as I haven’t previewed my shots. Of course I didn’t mention this to Honda Cars Philippines top marketing executive Arnel Doria, who was with me during the entire rare proceedings or I’ll never hear the end of it again from him. Somehow history tells me that some technical glitch always develops whenever he’s around me when I’m in a coverage. Right, my friend? Of course, there’s good old Ron delos Reyes, host/producer of the TV show Auto Review, who I’m sure got a good shot. I know I can always count on my fellow sigñore.

But these are times when I really wished I had a cameraman with me. Of course it was fortunate that I had STV’s (Sunshine Television Ventures) production manager and director, Jenny Bleza (she was with the media contingent invited by Toyota) with me in taping some episodes of Auto Focus and those fantastic concept cars during the actual motor show, which we shall feature on the Showcase segment of Motoring Today. But really covering mega motoring events like these is no walk in the park. You should have seen me sweating profusely, despite the Tokyo cold weather and probably mainly due to the burning spotlights, while taking multi angled shots of those fabulous cars on display. But next time I would know better. After all, most of the exhibitors now are also going high-tech by giving out CD roms and other audio-video aids.

More new technological advancements and breakthroughs in the automotive field from the 2003 Tokyo Motor Show in our coming columns, watch for them.

Happy Motoring!!!

For comments: motoring/[email protected].