On the final day of Gizmodo’s tour of Japan courtesy of Toyota Australia, our hosts took us for an inside peek of Tsutsumi. The plant is special for a few reasons. One, it’s in Aichi in Toyota City. We kid you not, there is actually a place called Toyota City, and it’s a real city with suburbs and the rest, not just some lame attempt at making a Toyota plant sound cool. Toyota City is about an hour outside of Nagoya. The plant is also special for it’s sustainability initiatives. When we say sustainable we really mean it. Aside from that, the plant is also special for it’s green initiatives that pretty much blow everyone else’s out of the water (pretty much, some other companies are as good or better).

Tsutsumi is massive. Let’s not beat around the bush. How big? Well, we didn’t get any exact measurements, but we did get this fact: The plant has 50,000 square metres of photovoltaic solar panels. That’s the equivalent of 60 tennis courts of solar panels alone. You can imagine the size of the plant itself then. It’s the main producer of Toyota’s Prius model and also produces Camry, Corolla and other models specific to Japan.

Walking inside the massive buildings (yes plural, there are a fair few of them) is like walking into Santa’s workshop, if he were building Toyota cars. The walkways take you from the very beginnings of production to the very end. You go from seeing hundreds of workers running around with trolleys filled with parts to workers starting the finished cars and driving five metres to the end of the production line. Within a few buildings a box of parts suddenly becomes the shell of a car which then grows with the addition of engines, gearbox and other internal parts before getting seats and fittings, doors, a spray job, mirrors and wipers and then a brief test.

Each worker literally has only a few minutes to finish their job. The production line only stops in emergencies. For example, the wiper guy: He has a box of wipers for all different models. A model arrives, it moves slowly through his area while he picks the correct wipers, attaches them to their sockets, winds them tight, tests they are fitted correctly, checks a few other parts and then moves on to the next car on the line.

Issues do occur though, and when they do, the worker with the problem has a button to push that sounds a yellow alarm. It sounds the alarm and shows up on the monitors around the plant. It’s a problem that won’t stop the line. Managers have a quick consultation about the problem and often it can be resolved without stopping the production line. In severe cases there is a red alarm. Again, it sounds a different tune and shows up on the monitors. It has happened before but it’s only for serious cases. It’s a well-oiled machine now, excuse the terrible, terrible pun, so red problems are quite uncommon.

More impressive than its Swiss coordination is the plant’s green credentials. It’s one of the most impressive environmentally friendly manufacturing plants in the world. Since 1990 the plant has managed to cut its CO2 by 50 per cent. This is how they did it.

Last year it installed those 60 tennis courts worth of solar panels. The total output of the panels is 2000kW, which is equal to the average consumption of 500 households. Sure, a manufacturing plant sucks up a lot more juice than 500 households worth, but it’s a bloody good start and there is a hell of a lot more. But just in case you’re wondering, this alone also reduced the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions by 740 tonnes per year, effectively saving 2500 drums of oil if we take a drum to be 200 litres. It’s also rather appropriate, being that the Prius is a hybrid and this is the Prius production plant. It effectively makes the plant a hybrid plant. These solar panels create about half of the electricity that the plant needs to operate. The other 50 per cent comes from gas co-generation.

Another cool thing is that the exterior of the plant’s buildings are covered in photo-catalytic paint. This breaks down airborne nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx). All 22,000 square metres of the assembly plant exterior is covered it in. Toyota has even painted one Prius with it. They would like to be able to sell Prius with this kind of paint but it’s extremely expensive and only comes in white so at this stage isn’t going to work. To put the effect of this paint in layman’s terms it has the same effect as planting 2000 trees, cleaning the air by producing oxygen in sunlight. Toyota also planted 50,000 trees at and around the factory in 2008.

Since Prius production began in 1997, the plant has reduced the amount of waste going to landfill by 82 per cent and has instituted plans to achieve complete elimination of incinerated waste. They have also begun a water-recycling programme that has cut water discharge into surrounding waterways by 50 per cent. What’s more, the water they do discharge is five times cleaner than that in the waterways anyway.

If you’re one of those people who thinks Toyota makes boring soccer mum cars, then you’re certainly entitled to that opinion. We certainly can’t say that the new Corolla or Camry sent shivers up our sports car loving spines (the Lexus LF-A might have though) but we have to bow our hats to Toyota’s energy saving ways.

Toyota, whose Prius is easy on the environment to drive but horrible on it to make, has engineered a new type of flower to help shoulder some of the damage their factories are spitting out.

The sage derivative’s leaves have unique characteristics that absorb harmful gases, while the gardenia’s leaves create water vapour in the air, reducing the surface temperature of the factory surrounds and, therefore, reducing the energy needed for cooling, in turn producing less carbon dioxide (CO2).

Well, holy shit. That is pretty insane. [Drive via Treehugger]

The most impressive point about the Prius Plug-In Hybrid is certainly its charging time. In under two hours at 200V (three hours at 100V) you can fully charge the battery. And that’s simply by plugging it into a standard power point. What’s more, while switched to full electric mode, you’ll be able to drive around 20km on a fully charged battery. Depending on where you live, that’s enough to get you down to the shops and back.

The Prius Plug-In Hybrid looks no different to the current Prius model, it just comes with a plug attached. It can operate with or without the battery charged and has greater fuel efficiency thanks to the improved battery. We asked Yukihiro Okane, Chief Engineer, Product Planning of the Toyota Product Development Group when we could expect batteries that could last for around the same distance as a tank of petrol now, but he said it was still too far away to tell.

This was the Japan premier of the Plug-In Hybrid. When word drops of when we can expect it Gizmodo will be sure to let you know.

Damian Francis is the editor-at-large for Australian T3 and contributing technology editor for GQ Australia. He is in Japan as a guest of Toyota Australia.

I don’t know if they are going to retire the daisies when the campaign is over, but I hope they don’t. I like some flowah-powah here and there. [The Design Blog]

Considering the first-gen Prius was launched in 1997 in Japan, that’s one hell of a long journey for hybrid engines to make it into a mainstream car. It does make you think about the long-term possibilities for alternative car fuels, doesn’t it?

There’s way too much tech built into the Prius for a single post here on Giz. There are over 1000 new patents for this generation of the hybrid vehicle alone. But here are some of the cooler features anyway:

* Keyless entry with a touch sensitive handle that locks and unlocks your car. The key fob (which ironically doesn’t have any keys) uses radio frequency to let you start the car. If you try and lock the car with the keys still inside, the car will beep at you like roadrunner.

* The HUD. That’s right, there’s a HUD which makes monitoring your speed simple. It also lets you monitor how economically you’re driving, and if you happen to be in the i-Tech model, will also indicate where to turn when you’re using the satnav. Awesome.

* Auto reverse parking. Press a button when you want to park, and the car will use its sensors to park the car for you. There’s something really frickin’ freaky about watching the steering wheel turn by itself as the car reverses into a parking space.

* The solar panels on the roof of the car automatically control a fan in the car which maintains an optimal internal temperature. So you can leave your car in the sun in the middle of the Simpson desert, but when you hop in, it will be a pleasant ambient temperature (or at least cooler than outside). You can even start the AC from the remote if you want to cool the car down.

I’ll be getting a car to drive around for a few days next week, so stay tuned for further in-depth coverage of the tech inside the car. In the meantime, the new Prius is set to launch next week for a starting price of $39,900, which is actually cheaper than the original starting price for the 1st gen Prius.

Still, this Toyota Prius Hearse plans to unleash its green yuppie fury on Japan’s funeral circuit. For just $US80,000 a pop, you too can ride around (rotting) in the finest of posthumous eco luxury. According to a rough translation and some metric conversion, it looks like this supersized Prius gets 4.5L/100km. That’s really pretty good for a dead person mobile. It’s just too bad you won’t be around to appreciate the fuel savings while giving smug looks to truck drivers at the pump. [Press Release via Japan Probe]

It’s a simple idea: You control car functions (like the stereo) with buttons on the wheel while the Tracer Display superimposes these buttons over your dashboard display. In other words, you can keep an eye on your speedometer instead of your wheel while searching for the one radio station not playing commercials.

And even though this display is a bit blurry in this shot, you can tell that the graphic overlay is really quite bright and sharp. Neat stuff…as if Prius owners needed another reason to be so smug. [KickingTires]

This bump is attributed to their new lithium ion battery, which can store more power than the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries found in traditional Prius models. The testing is ongoing, and there is no word on when we might actually be able to purchase the plug-in, but this is definitely encouraging news for anyone sick of lining the pockets of big oil companies. [Automotive News-subscription]

As previously mentioned, the car also has a solar panel used in the roof used to ventilate the car while parked, reducing AC usage once in motion, and LED taillights and daytime running lights.

The fore mentioned Ford dash, here:

Full details of the new Prius are over at Jalopnik.
[NetCarShow via Jalopnik]