Toyota plans seaweed bioplastic car

After the Toyota Prius, Toyota is taking its green efforts one step higher.

Toyota 1/X concept car photo

Toyota plans to unveil the prototype of a super-efficient car that is not made from light-weight aluminum, but reconstituted seaweed, a kelp-based bioplastic, at the Melbourne Auto Show, on February 28, 2009.

The Toyota seaweed car will be a variant of Toyota’s 1/X hybrid concept that has a super-light body (incorporating carbon fiber and plastic) , a 500cc gasoline engine, and lithium-ion batteries for electric-only power.

The Toyota 1/X hybrid is the same size as the Toyota Prius, but weighs much less, at 420 kgs.

Tetsuya Kaida, Manager of Toyota’s Corporate Value Development Project Department, who has envisioned the Toyota seaweed car, has said the existing Toyota 1/X uses lightweight carbon-fiber reinforced plastic throughout the body and frame for its superior collision safety, but the plastic is still oil-derived.

Toyota 1/X concept car side view photo

He predicts that the oil-derived plastics will be replaced by plant-based materials, like seaweed, in times to come.

“In the future, I’m sure we will have access to new and better materials, such as those made from plants…In fact, I want to create such a vehicle from seaweed because Japan is surrounded by the sea. This is my dream,” Tetsuya Kaida said.

Toyota’s engineers are trying to chart a course for the post-oil age, and plastics for structures and trim made from plants could be used to make cars of the future, says the manager of Toyota’s Australian styling studio, Paul Beranger.

David Buttner, Toyota Australia’s senior executive director of sales and marketing, has been quoted as saying, “It’s a concept car of post-2020. It is ultra-light and ultra-strong. Our thinking is that post-2020, cars like the 1/X will be made of plant-based plastic, eco plastics.”

Kaida has said that the seaweed-based technology can be used on all Toyota vehicles.

Toyota says the seaweed car will go into production not before 2015.

Seaweed or kelp grows underwater at a temperature below 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius). They grow very fast up to 1.5 foot per day, reaching a maximum length of 100 to 260 feet.

The Toyota 1/X hybrid concept car has been named the 1/X because when it is ready it is expected to have less than 1/10th of the environmental footprint of existing green cars.