Inside Toyota’s Hybrid Truck
The design brain trust of the world’s most successful auto company is discreetly tucked away in a leafy suburb of Newport Beach, Calif. Toyota’s (TM) Calty design and research facility sits inconspicuously at the end of a sleepy Orange County cul-de-sac. Surrounded by fountains and gardens, the studio radiates a monastic calm broken only by the sound of children playing in the yard of a nearby grade school.
Despite the Zen-like atmosphere, designers here have been brewing up creative disruption on four wheels for decades. Since it was established in 1973, Calty has served as the Japanese giant’s crucial toe-hold in the American auto market. The studio has created some of the company’s boldest and best-selling vehicles, including the 2005 Scion xB and the 2001 Highlander SUV. Now, Toyota’s American designers are at it again.
On Jan. 13 the company will take the wraps off yet another vehicle that could have embattled American automakers scrambling to catch up. A new concept truck, dubbed A-BAT, will make its debut in the heart of the U.S. auto industry at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. And there’s a twist: The tough-looking pickup packs a hybrid gas-electric power supply to reduce emissions and improve fuel economy.
The sleek vehicle is roughly the size of Toyota’s smallest SUV, the RAV4, despite looking much larger thanks to an oversize front grill and rough-and-tumble body design intended to delight truck aficionados. But in a marriage of red- and blue-state values, the truck was conceived as a gas-electric model. The truck’s cabin is shaped like a trapezoid, as is the company’s flagship gas-electric, the Prius, with which it shares the Hybrid Synergy Drive system. “People gravitate towards sporty,” says Matt Sperling, a designer with Calty. “If you inject utility into that, we think it’s win-win.”
