Inventor makes a car that can float
Hideo Tsurumaki watched the giant tsunami waves crash onto Japan’s northeast coast on March 11, 2011, sweeping away cars filled with people trying to escape.
As the vehicles sank slowly into the sea, Tsurumaki thought about his mother, who lives by the ocean in another earthquake-prone part of the country. She has difficulty walking, like many of those who tried to flee by car that day. And he thought that if the cars had been able to float, fewer people would have perished.
Two years later, the former employee of a unit of Toyota started to build a small, watertight electric vehicle that can float in floods, or even cruise at low speeds.
His startup has some notable backers, a functioning prototype, and plans to produce 10,000 cars a year from late this year at a factory that it’s renting near Bangkok in Thailand. By 2020, Tsurumaki hopes to take the company public.
Tsurumaki worked for three years with University of Tokyo researchers on ways to drive the car in water with all tires submerged, eventually deciding to use turbine-shaped wheels that draw in water as they revolve, and a component at the front that releases the water to achieve propulsion. It also allows the vehicle to be turned using the steering wheel.
While the startup has made progress, challenges still abound. The biggest is costs. That means the cars will sell for about 580,000 baht (€14,700), enough to buy a much bigger vehicle.
Tsurumaki says he’s looking to cut the price to less than $5,000 per car by sourcing mass-produced components at lower costs.
