Toyota Plugs In Home, To
Honda makes engines, airplanes and robots.
Toyota makes cars, boats and modular homes.
What? Yes, Toyota is also into the modular home business in Japan like the concept home
depicted above. It sold 5,300 last fiscal year. So, it
would make sense that you converge your e-drive
technology with your home product and, in a sense,
that’s what it’s about to do when it introduces its
plug-in Prius in 2012. The company has developed
its Toyota Smart Energy center, which it recently debuted in a smart grid community it created in Toyota
City.
According to the company, by converging the
home and the electric car, which will, in the future,
account for one-third of a home’s energy consumption, overall energy use can be reduced 75% (See ‘Living the One Tonne Life’ on page 12).
The import of this announcement is that the
2012 Prius Plug-In has to have some level of Vehicleto-Home capabilities, not V2G yet, but V2H, the first
step towards longer term V2G capability, where, at
least in theory, automobiles can become income generators and not financial black holes.
Toyota’s Shigeki Tomoyama explained it this
way, “Linking the home and the car will reduce global-warming gases. That will become our social duty.
Bill Moore –