The Origin, Change and Prosperity of Japanese Cars: There is a Tesla in Japan (6)

After Tokyo Electric Power Company found Mitsubishi and Subaru to help the automobile industry, the next step was to persuade experts, scholars and government officials to formulate corresponding incentive policies.

Mitsubishi and Subaru have produced pure electric vehicles Colt and R 1e respectively, and invited government officials, technical experts and even representatives of the American Society of Automotive Engineers to experience at the company's proving ground. As a gesture, Tokyo Electric Power Company ordered 65,438+000 cars from Subaru Company at one time, which will be delivered in 2006.

Among these government officials, Shigeru Matsuzawa, the governor of Kanagawa Prefecture (equivalent to the governor of China), chose to be the owner of Subaru R 1e and decided to implement the most radical subsidy policy for electric vehicles in Kanagawa Prefecture. Matsuzawa has always believed that pure electric vehicles are not science fiction, and it is entirely possible to change the world.

Before Mitsubishi and Subaru, Matsuzawa Maowen had already experienced two pure electric vehicles. These two cars completely changed his attitude towards pure electric vehicles, which were designed and manufactured by Dr. Shimizu of Keio University in Tokyo, not far from Kanagawa.

If the history goes back to around 2003, Dr Shimizu should be able to become good friends with Musk. Their ideas about pure electric power are surprisingly consistent, and at the same time, no one is suspected of copying their ideas.

Dr Shimizu's idol is Mr Ford, but his ideas are strikingly consistent with those of Musk. Dr Shimizu believes that having extremely strong power and exceeding the limit speed can effectively increase car sales. To this end, the company established by Dr. Shimizu has always been committed to manufacturing high-performance electric vehicles. In practice, it prefers to launch high-end pure electric vehicles with strong performance first, which attracts the attention of the rich and bureaucrats.

Masataka Shimizu also chose to name cars with letters when designing cars, which reflected people's worship of Ford. Shimizu designed the first pure electric vehicle in 1978 and named it Type A ... This is a modified Subaru Leone. Qingshui has a lead-acid battery and two motors on the front wheel.

Shimizu's second car, named Model B, is a motorcycle. It adopts the iconic hub motor drive system-integrating motor, energy regeneration, mechanical braking, hub bearing and transmission device to minimize mechanical losses, reduce weight and increase space.

After accumulating these experiences, Dr. Shimizu hopes to design a pure electric vehicle that can be mass-produced. At that time, people had preconceived ideas about pure electric vehicles. In order to better convince the market, Dr. Shimizu decided to build a "dream machine", which not only has superior performance, but also has excellent control and high turnover rate, affecting a group of rich and powerful people.

A Japanese technology company (named this) expressed its interest and offered 4 million dollars to Shimizu to design a pure electric vehicle, which can kill all diesel locomotives in a few seconds.

In 2003, Dr Shimizu designed KAZ electric car. This car looks particularly strange now, but there are many ideas behind it.

KAZ is numbered G in Dr. Shimizu. The concept car continues the characteristics of Dr. Shimizu, and each wheel is integrated with a motor. At that time, the motors were mainly made of ferrotitanium, and the power of each motor was 55 kilowatts. If the car is designed in the conventional way, the maximum four wheels are only 220 kilowatts and 295 horsepower.

Shimizu couldn't accept this performance, so he decided to add four more wheels (motors) to this concept car and finally designed a monster with eight wheels. Therefore, KAZ's power output has reached 440 kW, and the whole vehicle is close to 590 HP. However, the length of the whole vehicle also reached 6.7 meters.

However, eight wheels also bring a lot of trouble to steering. The design of this car was accepted by an Italian company. Because the wheels are integrated with the motor, the steering needs to be connected to the parallelogram suspension. Therefore, KAZ's first four wheels are mainly used for steering, the third axle is fixed, and the fourth axle can rotate slightly when moving, thus solving the steering problem.

When this car was produced, Dr Shimizu was full of confidence. Only the G-car. From Model A to Model T, Ford has produced more than 20 kinds of cars, and Shimizu can develop electric vehicles before Model T. ..

KAZ's performance has exceeded people's expectations. It takes only 7 seconds to accelerate at zero speed, with a top speed of 365,438+065,438+0 km/h, cruising at a speed of 65,438+000 km/h, and it can travel 300 km on a single charge. Shimizu hopes to increase the cruising range to 600 kilometers in a short time.

Then Shimizu brought the car to the Detroit Auto Show. Shimizu believes that KAZ can be mass-produced at a price of $400,000 as long as the order exceeds 65,438+000. Unfortunately, KAZ only got two orders in the end.

This situation made Shimizu unhappy, but it didn't knock him down. On the contrary, he believes that KAZ's poor performance is due to its lack of absolute restraint and unconventional shape on traditional diesel locomotives, so he decided to build a car with faster acceleration and a top speed of more than 400 kilometers per hour to break the top speed record of legal gasoline vehicles on the street.

In the second year, Shimizu upgraded KAZ and changed its name after the upgrade. Because this car is a lithium-ion car, Shimizu decided to merge the initials E-Li-I-Ca into the name Eliica.

Katz's body over 6 meters has brought certain difficulties to driving. On Eliica, the clean water is compressed to 5. 1 m, the weight is controlled at about 2.4 tons, and the number of seats is reduced from 8 to 4. In order to reduce the wind resistance, many streamline designs and wind tunnels are designed on the car body, and the front door is upward from the front door to the back door with gull-wing doors.

The battery uses 80 batteries, and it takes 100 hours to fully charge under the Japanese voltage of100 V. In order to ensure the power, the number of wheels has not been reduced. On the contrary, in order to match the smaller car body, the number of wheels is reduced and the car body is made lower, thus obtaining better aerodynamics and stability. The motor was upgraded to 60 kilowatts, and the total power was increased to 480 kilowatts and 644 horsepower.

In order to more specifically target the traditional diesel locomotive? Eliica has released two versions, an extreme version and an accelerated version. The speed moderator mainly breaks the record of the highest speed limit of gasoline vehicles, with a top speed of 370 km/h and a cruising range of 200 km. The accelerated version has a top speed of 190 km/h and a battery life of 320 km.

It can be said that this kind of car fully conforms to the name of "dream cars". At that time, the performance of this car influenced many people's views on pure electric vehicles, including Japanese politicians. In addition to Shigeru Matsuzawa, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and the Crown Prince of Japan have all experienced this car.

Unfortunately, despite its powerful performance, Eliica's exaggerated modeling is not practical, and its high cost has not left a deep impression on the conservative Japanese consumers. If this car was born in California, I believe it will be another situation.

Even so, Eliica has completed the enlightenment of pure electric vehicles to Japanese consumers, and many politicians deeply influenced by it have begun to pay attention to the development of pure electric vehicles and are busy preparing to formulate the development strategy of pure electric vehicles …

Mitsubishi and Subaru, who thought they would rise in the east wind, were accidentally copied by Nissan. In order to compete with Toyota and Honda, Nissan decided to focus on developing pure electric vehicles ... more magical leaves are about to appear.

Figure? |? From the network

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.