Toyota Motor now plans to open its powertrain technology to competitors, hoping this will improve sales and accelerate the market’s shift to lower-emission automobiles.
Revealing recently it would broaden its gasoline hybrid technology advancement, the automkaer stated it would think about selling complete powertrain modules – engines, transmissions and other drive parts – to its rivals.
The possibility of offering competitors access to “one-size-fits-all” powertrains comes as automobiles are progressively based on digital elements, making it much easier to create comparable parts throughout model varieties. The market has carried on from contending mainly on mechanical engineering.
That pattern will likely speed up as carmakers face pressure from regulators to additional cut automobile emissions and establish more long-range electrical automobiles.
As automobiles end up being more like glorified computer systems, car manufacturers are standardizing lots of mechanical parts and contending more on design and product packaging – providing drivers a larger variety of functions from automated parking to cockpit concierges.
For Toyota, this is a huge departure from having a tightly-knit network of providers keeping much of their collectively established innovation exclusive so as to have an engineering competitive edge on competitors.
“Toyota providers produce a great deal of innovation which can only be utilized by Toyota,” Toshiyuki Mizushima, president of Toyota’s powertrain business, informed press reporters. “We wish to alter that to a system where we develop technology with our providers at an earlier phase … so they can make that technology available to non-Toyota consumers.”
Mizushima, who joined Toyota a year ago from group Aisin Seiki Co, noted that for instance, that past variations of Toyota’s hybrid system didn’t fit other car manufacturers’ vehicles, limiting providers’ options to sell to non-Toyota consumers.
Powertrains integrate parts often made independently by a number of independent parts makers, however Toyota’s are unique because they are made by its group providers, permitting engineers at the car manufacturer and its providers to team up in development.
