The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
Toyota gets into gear with new rally-inspired hatchback model
NAGOYA — Toyota Motor Corp. is bidding to change its image with i t s new GR Yaris sports car, which was launched this month. The GR Yaris is Toyota’s first attempt at making a production vehicle based on a rally car. “It has crossed the boundaries between production, development, sales and motorsports,” Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda said at the launch event. “I have no doubt it will have a huge impact on Toyota’s manufacturing going forward.”
The GR Yaris is a sports car that was developed by collecting information about the cars in the World Rally Championship. The newly developed engine is compact and lightweight, yet delivers a powerful driving performance. The last time Toyota sold a sports car with four- wheel drive was about 20 years ago when it stopped production on the Celica GT-Four.
The comfort and drive performance of their regular vehicles will benefit from the technological advances required to produce high-performance vehicles.
In 2 0 1 7 , the company launched the GR brand of sports cars.
Toyota’s recent sports cars were the Toyota 86, which was released in 2012 and was jointly developed with Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., now Subaru Corp., and the Supra, which was released in 2019 and was jointly developed with BMW. The GR Yaris was solely developed by Toyota.
“We had always wanted a sports car that we built ourselves,” Toyoda said.
Toyoda test-drove the vehicle himself to make the final checks before sending the car to the market.
The president garnered a lot of attention when he won the 24-hour endurance race at the Fuji International Speedway earlier this month.
The GR Yaris is assembled at the Motomachi Plant in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, where a new dedicated assembly line has been created, bringing in skilled workers from all over the company.
Performance is an important factor, so the company has deliberately increased the amount of work that is done by hand compared to other mass-produced vehicles, according to a senior official.
In motorsports, profitability is often neglected, but Toyoda said he had told the plant managers “to make sure we stay in the black.” The plant managers had also made sure that the Toyota Production System was thoroughly implemented in the production line, aiming to improve efficiency.
The price for the GR Yaris ranges from ¥ 2.65 million to ¥ 4.56 million. It’s more expensive than the standard Yaris, which starts at around ¥1.4 million, but as of Aug. 31, there had been about 5,000 preorders for the GR Yaris against a monthly sales target of 1,100.
“If this unique style of manufacturing spreads to other production vehicles, it will help create an entirely new image for Toyota,” an analyst said.
“Up until now, our vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands have been very standard,” Toyoda said. “From now on, I believe it is my mission to create cars that will surprise and delight people, and make them think, ‘Is this the same company?’”
NEC Corp. has developed a system using the latest facial recognition technology that allows for the scanning of individuals even if they are wearing a mask, and plans to roll it out in mid-October.
Foreseeing use of the system in office buildings and other locations that have security gates, NEC developed it in response to demands for a way to eliminate the need to take off a mask, as many people wear masks all day due to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The technology matches facial information of the individual picked up by the camera, such as the position of their eyes and the width between their eyebrows, with a pre-scanned image of their face to provide a positive identification.
The facial recognition process is completed within a second by scanning characteristics around the eyes. By combining the system with NEC’s existing iris recognition technology, individuals will also be identifiable in poorly lit locations.
NEC plans to market the system to airports, companies and schools, among other entities. It has set a target of ¥100 billion in sales by the end of fiscal 2021 from its businesses for biometrics and image analysis in addition to facial recognition.