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Kazuo Natori does not have a driving licence and is terrified of Tokyo’s
teeming traffic, but this has not stopped him from spearheading the development
of the fastest electric car in the world. Under Natori’s guidance, researchers
at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) built the IZA (right), a stylish
car with a top speed of 176 kilometres an hour, adding around 10 kilometres
to the record previously held by Impact, built by General Motors.

There is plenty of competition to build the fastest electric cars between
Japanese companies and carmakers such as General Motors and Daimler-Benz,
but the IZA is not just intended to break records. Its real goal is to show
the potential for electric cars as an ordinary means of transport. ‘In 1988,
when we decided to develop the IZA, the image of electric cars was very
negative, and we wanted to make the image better by showing the world what
we could do with electricity,’ Natori says. Now he confidently predicts
that ‘electric cars will be widespread by the year 2000’. Japan’s Ministry
of International Trade and Industry agrees with him – it expects that 200
000 electric cars will run on Japanese roads by the turn of the century.

In 1988, Natori explains, the top speed of electric vehicles was only
70 kilometres per hour and they needed to be completely recharged after
just 90 kilometres on the road. The IZA can run for a record 550 kilometres
on a single charge.

The motors that drive IZA are embedded in the wheels. The 500-kilogram
nickel-cadmium battery that powers the vehicle is split in two with the
front and back wheels served separately. The driver operates the IZA with
the accelerator and brake pedal. As these pedals move up and down, they
transmit signals to a computerised systems controller which translates them
into instructions telling the motors in the four wheels to rotate correspondingly.

But whatever the technical excellence of the protoype IZA and other
up-and-coming models, the main priority is getting them onto the road.
One model, the Libero, based on the IZA, has already been built by Natori’s
team working with the Matsushita car com-pany and will be unveiled at the
Tokyo Motor Show later this month.

Predictably, there have had to be some compromises in performance in
building a road model: top speed is 130 kilometres an hour and a single
charge lasts for 250 kilometres. Inside, it is much like any modern car
– elegant, with power steering and air conditioning.

Uniquely, says Natori, it has an ‘on-board’ charger which will recharge
the car overnight in about eight hours from a conventional mains supply.
If plenty of electric cars are built, these chargers will reap profits for
TEPCO which will be able to sell electricity at night when demand for the
commodity is usually slack.

That will drive up production of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at
power stations, of course, but Natori claims that overall, emissions of
the gas would fall by 43 per cent compared with the amount produced by cars
when they burn petrol and diesel.

At present, the biggest drawback is the price – 21 million yen (about
£131 000). The battery alone costs 10 million yen, but Natori says
that they are completely recyclable. TEPCO expects the price to fall as
the cars become popular.

The IZA is not Japan’s only record-breaking design for a potential car
of the future. Toyota has a solar-powered racing car called the ‘RaRa 10’
which can reach speeds of 120 kilometres an hour. Last year, it won the
International Solar Car Rally on the Noto Peninsula in Japan.

Mazda claims to have developed the world’s most advanced hydrogen-powered
vehicle. Like TEPCO, Mazda will put a new version of its experimental car
on display at the Tokyo Motor Show. The HR-X2 is a two-door sedan, takes
just 15 minutes to charge with hydrogen, and can travel 400 kilometres
on one charge at speeds of 150 kilometres an hour.

The first export market for cars like the Libero and the HR-X2 is likely
to be California, which has passed tough environmental laws under which
2 per cent of cars in the state must have zero emissions by 1998, and 10
per cent by 2003.