Even buses do it

Sky, Ocean, River, Air, representing the Earth’s water cycle, is the name for a new bus. Well, shortened to just the acronym “Sora”. Toyota plans to launch sales of a commercial model based on the concept vehicle in 2018. Notably, the company expects to introduce more than 100 Sora, mainly within the Tokyo metropolitan area, ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Toyota aims to create a bus that works for the world and for people, is environmentally friendly, and can contribute to communities beyond its role as a mobility service.

The Toyota Fuel Cell System (TFCS), which was developed for the Mirai has been adopted to deliver superior environmental performance with no CO emissions or

2 Substances of Concern (SOC) emitted when in operation. The Sora’s high-capacity external power supply system provides 9 kw W maximum output and electricity supply of 235 kwh. It can even be used as an emermergency power source following disasters. s.

Because the bus is envisaged to be used by large and varying numbers of passengers, ngers, Toyota focused on convenience, safety and peace of mind for “a pleasant riding experiperience, so that they would want to ride the he buses regularly”.

The horizontal seats have an automatic atic storage mechanism to provide space for or strollers or wheelchairs, providing extra seating for regular passengers when the space ace is not needed for strollers or wheelchairs.

Safety features include eight high-definition cameras fitted inside and outside detect pedestrians and bicycles around the bus, providing a peripheral monitoring function that warns the driver with sound and images. An acceleration control function suppresses jerky pull-aways and enables

gentle acceleration from stops (bus drivers the world over will probably protest at one of their favourite passenger-tormenting methods being nullified).

A novel feature is automatic arrival control, which detects a guidance line on the road surface and uses automatic steering and deceleration to stop the bus with approximately 3 to 6 cm of clearance from the bus stop, and within a range of 10 cm ahead of or behind the bus stop position. That’s particularly useful for passengers using strollers or wheelchairs.

Connectivity also enjoys high priority. According to Toyota speed, punctuality and convenience are boosted by ITS Connect, which utilises vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicleto-infrastructure communications to support safe driving. This works together with systems that support bus convoys and that provide priority at traffic signals.

Finally, if the overall design looks different from regular buses, buses that’s because it uses stereoscopic shaping. This is said to differ significantly from the hexahedron (box shape) of conventional buses. It also uses LED for the front and rear lights that, in addition to their functional characteristics of long life and efficiency, allow the stylists to create an instantly recognisable look.

A smooth power climb, to prevent spinning the tyres when exiting a corner. No lag, because there’s no external device delivering boost. Better sound. No supercharger howling at the intake, no turbo muffling the exhaust. flows a lot of air and thus can be tailored for a sort of split personality: livable at idle and still explosive at high revs.

To find out just how explosive, I strapped into Mercury Racing’s test mule, a ratty Ultima GTR, on a runway at Fond du Lac airport in Wisconsin, down the road from Mercury’s headquarters. Mercury chose the Ultima, a mid-engine kit car from England, as a test bed because it’s lightweight and uses a steel tube frame designed to accommodate engines making as much as 1 500 kilowatts.

The SB4 fires up with a lumpy idle, the staccato lope of a race engine awaiting its orders. But it’s not belching flames or threatening to stall or displaying the sort of untoward behaviour you might expect to accompany the kilowatt equivalent of 750 horsepower. Indeed, the 2017 460-hp (340-kw) Corvette Grand Sport that I drove the same day sounded more ragged at idle.

The engine’s specialness, though, is evident in motion. At 6 000 r/min, the Corvette is ready to upshift, but the SB4 is just getting started on a manic surge towards its 8 000-r/min redline. You’ve got to will yourself to hang in there for the last couple thousand revs, as your ears tell you to shift, but your eyes on the tach tell you you’re not there yet. I’ve never driven an original Corvette ZR-1, but I’d imagine it’s more like this – frenetic and linear – than the current Z06’s sledgehammer delivery of supercharged torque. This is the alternate reality where GM and Mercury Marine kept collaborating on spin-dizzy V8s that dare you to keep the throttle down.

Alas, they didn’t, and probably won’t. Chevrolet’s ZR-1, for all its greatness, costs twice as much as a regular Corvette; the new Z06 is R340 000 on top of f the R780 000 for a stock Corvette. . And with few exceptions, all the e modern big-horsepower engines s are going to forced induction, turbos and superchargers that make more power with smaller, comparatively fuel-efficient engines. These days, natural aspiration is an indulgence, and the SB4 represents a chance to experience it in its highest form; American flavour, bolted into whatever hot rod or track car you care to put it in. A new Corvette would be appropriate, but I’d like to drop an SB4 in a 1969 Chevy C10 short-bed. Or better yet, an old Donzi 22. I don’t know if it’s occurred to Mercury, but one of these could make for a pretty fast boat. A camshaft is a cylinder with little protrusions that, as the cam rotates, press on levers that open valves to let air in or out of the combustion chamber. In a pushrod engine, a single cam pushes rods to activate the valves – hence, you know, pushrods.