Tokyo Motor Show 2019

[cwerdna]

Anyone going? I'm not sure if I'm going again yet. If I go, it'll be my 6th year attending and 7th time to Japan for vacation.

It's every 2 years. Dates are at https://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/en/outline/. As before, it's around end of Oct thru early Nov.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=24436 was my thread on TMS 2017.

As before, I highly recommend car enthusiasts attend for at least two days, but also leave time to go sightseeing around the rest of Japan, or at least Tokyo.

 

[cwerdna]

Bump... anyone going?

 

[downeykp]

Making my third trip to Japan next month for festival season. Japan is awesome.

 

[goldbrick]

Japan is awesome.

It is! I went for my first time on a business trip a few weeks ago and loved it. I'm hoping to return with my wife and do some skiing this winter. It's getting to the point where I can count the number of good ski seasons left in my knees on my hands so it's probably time to do something like this. I'm not much of a 'ski vacation' person but skiing in Japan sounds so awesome and it's such a cool country and culture that I might make an exception this time.

 

[downeykp]

Great skiing in Hokkaido. Deep powder. Its a plan of mine also.

 

[cwerdna]

Bump again...

Anyone here going? If you not, you'll need to wait for 2 years after this one.

 

[DougWantsALeaf]

Nope, but please take and post some pictures as to what incremental changes might be coming to the Leaf next year.

 

[cwerdna]

Nope, but please take and post some pictures as to what incremental changes might be coming to the Leaf next year.

Hopefully there will be some. In Japan, they have the choice of some colors and color schemes for Leaf that don't exist in the US. I thought about posted about this 2 years ago but can't find it now.

Hope this links works (for example): https://www3.nissan.co.jp/vehicles/new/leaf/simulation.html#configure/BABPq/ARkUXIHe/exterior-colour. Notice choices like a black roof with yellow, red or blue lower portions? Also, from https://www3.nissan.co.jp/vehicles/new/leaf/simulation.html#configure/BABPq/ARkUXIHf/version, they have Nismo and Autech versions.

 

[lkkms2]

Japan is awesome.

It is! I went for my first time on a business trip a few weeks ago and loved it. I'm hoping to return with my wife and do some skiing this winter. It's getting to the point where I can count the number of good ski seasons left in my knees on my hands so it's probably time to do something like this. I'm not much of a 'ski vacation' person but skiing in Japan sounds so awesome and it's such a cool country and culture that I might make an exception this time.

Don’t forget to try/enjoy the “Onsens” ( hot springs)!

 

[cwerdna]

Bump again... I am definitely going. Bought the plane tickets a few weeks ago.

Anyone here going?

 

[DougWantsALeaf]

Very jealous. Please send pictures.

 

[goldbrick]

I'll be in Japan in early Dec but it will be too late for the car show. And too early for skiing. Maybe next year.

 

[cwerdna]

I'll be in Japan in early Dec but it will be too late for the car show. And too early for skiing. Maybe next year.

TMS is AFAIK still going to be every other year, so you'll need to wait until 2021.

Long ago, it was passenger cars + motorcycles one year w/commercial vehicles on in between years. AFAIK, they've just combined the two with both in one as I've seen buses and big rig and smaller commercial trucks at Tokyo Motor Show.

 

[cwerdna]

I don't have time to write much tonight but I was amused to see on the Japanese market Mercedes EQC that they once again put the J1772 inlet on the rear corner of the bumper and that on the rear fender near it, it had a CHAdeMO inlet. Here were go again just like i3 and e-Golf. They had to support Combo1, Combo2 and CHAdeMO.

Had an interesting conversation with a rep of http://www.jp.mahle.com/ (a German company) about EVs in Japan. Some of their components are in my Bolt (since I'd seen their name on one of them). He knew about California being an unusual market. Will post about it later.

As usual, most of the vehicles on the display at the booth I've been to so far were ICEVs, some being non-plugin hybrids.

 

[cwerdna]

I thought I posted the first part of this here but either it disappeared or I made a user error.

I finished my 2nd day of Tokyo Motor Show and was very surprised to see Tesla had a small booth there. They normally almost never show up to auto shows and I've never seen them at Tokyo Motor Show before. I'll try to post some pics when I find the time.

They only had an S and X on display. They had a poster board listing info on all 3 models. The worker mentioned that there is a 3 on display at NTT Docomo's booth.

I briefly talked to him about being from CA, about there being a ton of Teslas at my work, etc. I asked if the CHAdeMO adapter is standard on all 3 models. He said that it comes with the S and X but it's optional on the 3. I asked how many Superchargers there are in Japan. After some clarification, he said there are 20 sites.

Their inlet (at least on the CHAdeMO adapter in the trunk of their car) uses the same connector as US/Canadian Teslas.

Mitsubishi Motors's booth had a display of https://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/innovation/motorshow/2019/gms2019/dendo/ involving an Outlander PHEV. The unit on display was from Nichicon and looked very much like https://www.chademo.com/portfolios/nichicon-ev-power-station/.

At https://www.megaweb.gr.jp/index.html, I saw some display (for a presentation) and w/chairs that involved a Leaf, Clarity FCEV and Mirai being attached to https://www.chademo.com/portfolios/nichicon-power-mover/ or for Honda to one of https://www.chademo.com/portfolios/honda-9kva/ (not sure if the max wattage was the same). The Leaf's "Power Mover" was hooked up to two drink fridges. Everything was off and the display was cleaned up later that evening: chairs gone and units removed.

Nissan's two booths had displays involving Leaf w/CHAdeMO attached to units that looked very much like or identical to https://www.chademo.com/portfolios/mitsubishi-6kw/. There are more units along these lines at https://www.chademo.com/products/v2x-product/.

 

[DougWantsALeaf]

Thank you for the details.

Was the new Mazda Chademo equipped? In some videos from Italy I have seen it with Chademo, but some posts suggest it’s getting ccs?

How about the Lexus concept? Was it Chademo?

 

[cwerdna]

Sorry, sightseeing, transit and planning has taken priority. I typed up the below on shinkansen (from Tokyo to Kyoto) last night but couldn't get my laptop to tether w/my phone (iOS tethering is very flalky) and the train's wi-fi was useless and unusable. Tokyo station to Kyoto station by car is a min of 461 km (about 286 miles). The Nozomi train took about 2 hours 18 minutes including the couple stops it made. Fastest I saw it go per my GPS monitoring apps was ~175 mph. Too bad shinkansen travel isn't cheap. It was over 13.3K yen for a non-reserved seat (over $120 USD). Reserved seats were sold out for the day and it was CRAZY crowded on the train platform w/tons of people in line to get into a non-reserved car.

I'm 90% sure the train I took was the very popular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N700_Series_Shinkansen given that I took https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dkaid%C5%8D_Shinkansen. I've also taken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San%27y%C5%8D_Shinkansen in a past trip.

They really did a good job w/reducing the tunnel boom (loud noise you hear when you enter and exit a tunnel). Was mentioned at the Nagoya train museum I visited years ago. I rode on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_Series_Shinkansen ages ago and the tunnel boom on those was quite loud and would shake the train.

-- begin --
I'm typing this while a bullet train to Kyoto right now. It is standing room. Fortunately, I was able to get a seat, unlike the many folks who are standing for a 2+ hour train ride. Unfortunately, by the time you asked, I was already done with TMS and wasn't planning to pay for a 3rd day's ticket.

Unfortunately, I can't answer either. The MX-30 was up on a platform and there as no way to see it. The Lexus EV they showed was definitely way too much of concept and very far from production w/gull-wing doors and that.

So, you'd be best off Googling to see what you can find. It's safe to assume that if released for Japan it will have CHAdeMO. I've never heard of either CCS standard here in Japan. Even the German automakers are and have been putting on CHAdeMO on Japanese versions of their EVs (e.g. i3, e-Golf and now EQC).
-- end --

Side note, I visited http://www.kyotorailwaymuseum.jp/en/highlights/ and was surprised they actually maintain and run some coal-burning steam locomotives that you can get a brief ride on (well, towed by the engine). As someone who's been coal-rolled and seen it too, this is literal coal rolling. There was a big bin of coal nearby and I saw a forklift dump more coal into the engine's bin in the back.

I saw them use the turntable (shown at https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g298564-d10251298-Reviews-Kyoto_Railway_Museum-Kyoto_Kyoto_Prefecture_Kinki.html#photos;aggregationId=101&albumid=101&filter=7&ff=213129413) to turn a train a bunch of times.

update: My trip's coming to an end soon. As I posted in another forum: I arrived 10/28 and am leaving 11/5, Japan time. I stayed in Tokyo the most time but also have stayed in Kyoto and now Osaka. During this time, like before, I've seen very few EVs here. In the wild, I can only recall seeing 2 gen 1 Leafs and 1 Model 3.

 

[cwerdna]

Very jealous. Please send pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4rvQ00q56o can give you an idea of what was on display. No, that's not me. It's something I quickly found on YouTube.

He didn't cover any of the suppliers (e.g. Mahle, Aisin, Koito, Marelli (https://www.marelli-corporation.com/en/, Calsonic Kansei (big supplier to Nissan partly because Nissan used to own a big stake in them) is now part of them), Continental, Tokai Rika, Yazaki, Hitachi, Schaeffler Group, https://www.ichikoh.com/en/products/oem.html, etc.) which are also interesting to me.

https://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/en/outline/exhibitors_list.html is the list of exhibitors. https://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/en/ had map of the venues. It was unusual this time in that they didn't use the east hall. They had some of the major automakers at the Ariake area and the rest at the Aomi area.

Oddly, at the Toyota booth, they didn't have a single current sold vehicle on display. It was all devoted to future stuff (e.g. autonomous vehicles including small delivery ones). I figured that since the Toyota (?) Megaweb (https://www.megaweb.gr.jp/about/english.html) was nearby, folks who wanted to see Toyotas could go there. I'd visited Megaweb numerous times in years past. However, this time, there were almost no Toyotas on display there and they instead had their "future expo" in there. In between the Aomi and Ariake areas (you could take a bus, train or walk (about 15 to 20 minute walk)), they had an "open road" area (https://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/event1/en/open_road/) with various notable vehicles on display like http://gtr-registry.com/en-r35-usain-bolt.php with "MR. BOLT" on it and a van from some Japanese reality show and some modded vehicles (e.g. wrapped w/anime stuff). The list at that page isn't complete. There were some vehicles you could try but I wanted to try some in one area and there was a requirement that one understands Japanese. Oh well.

The Lexus booth had current products and concept(s).

I did see some of https://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/event1/en/drive_park/ like the drone racing and the "Off-Road Experience" (at the bottom). Mitsubishi had their SUV (Eclipse Cross, I think) go up that steep ramp. Toyota had some pickups (Hilux?) and Land Cruisers go over some obstacles. It seemed like that the off-road stuff was all ride-along and you needed to have a reservation.

One thing that surprised me was at Hino's booth, they showed a concept for an automated version of EDDS: https://www.hino-global.com/corp/news/2018/20180521.html. They want to detect via cameras if the driver of a bus becomes incapacitated (falls asleep or has some medical emergency) like if he's leaning heavily over to the side, has his head back, is slumped over the steering wheel, etc. You could get on a simulator there to try those things. If it detects one of these conditions, it puts the flashers on, I think makes noises and tries to find a safe place for the vehicle to automatically pull itself over to the side. I see that https://www.hino-global.com/products/safety/safety_system/ briefly touches on this.

I guess they figure this is a stepping stone to level 4 or 5 driving without needing a system like that to be ready.

Side note: I was in Japan for about a week this time and during the time I was there, I only spotted 3 EVs in the wild: 2 gen 1 Leafs and 1 Model 3.

 

[cwerdna]

https://www.autoblog.com/2019/10/25/2019-tokyo-motor-show-mega-gallery-photos/ has some more pics.