The Japan Mobility Show (JMMS) 2005 Feature Report: EVs, Hypercars, and Hybrid Supercars
You can view rendered images of the Vision Qe, a car that has a swooping roofline, fastback rear, and massive front air intake. The Vision QXe was teased and a similarly unknown release window.
Despite its great start on the EV market with the Leaf, Nissan only added one more EV that is currently on sale: the Ariya.
Naturally, it’s also emblazoned by Infiniti’s recently updated logo, where the arrow inward no longer intersects to a point. In order to better represent the infinite road to the horizon, the lines moving towards the logo’s center are gone before they touch.
Electric sports cars from other high-end brands like Audi, Lotus, and Mercedes-AMG are still years away, with no concepts to even give us a taste of what to expect, while supercar companies like Ferrari and McLaren are only just starting to talk about making EVs. The electric hypercars manufactured by Pininfarina and Rimac cost $2 million dollars each but only in limited quantities.
In auto enthusiast circles there have been two trends in recent years that have all been shared: the dying of auto shows and the death of sports cars.
Some of the vehicles that have been presented at the show include robotic scooters, production kei vans, and E VTOL prototypes. I don’t recall the last time an auto show had this much new product to talk about, apart from some shows focused on the Chinese market.
You can be forgiven for thinking it was 2005 in Japan this week. The Japan Mobility Show is a new name for the Tokyo Motor Show, which used to be called the Tokyo Motor Show.
The most visually production ready of the sports cars shown is Honda’s reborn Prelude. It’s a cab-forward, two-door coupe that more closely evokes the discontinued Civic coupe than Preludes of the past. Depending on who you talk to, the Prelude either looks great or too much like aMitsubishi Eclipse, it has a fresh look for Honda and it has an angry face. The concept has real panel gaps and glass surrounds, and even the lights and bumpers look like they could go straight into production.
Honda showed off a number of electric bikes and scooters,including the Motocompacto that will go on sale in the US later this year. The Sustaina-C idea is a small car made from recycled acrylic resin that can be used by old people who don’t have the ability to drive. On the more wacky side, Honda revealed an Avatar Robot that can remotely perform tasks for the controlling user and the Uni-One wheelchair-like mobility device that can be controlled without using your hands by just shifting your body weight. There is also a display of Honda’s e VTOL and HondaJet.
After years of concepts and rumors, it seems like Mazda is finally getting close to putting a rotary-powered sports car back into production, this time with an unexpected twist. The new IconicSP idea is based on the BMW i3REx and Chevrolet’s Chevrolet Volt, it uses a rotary engine to help extend the range of the electric vehicle.
Before focusing on the powertrain, just take a look at the Iconic SP — it’s absolutely stunning. A two-door coupe with swan-wing doors, a fixed roof, and what presumably is a liftback glass hatch, Mazda describes the Iconic SP as a car that “embodies the joy of driving.” It’s perfectly proportioned, with wonderfully sculpted, super wide fenders, an extremely sloping hood and low nose, and minimal surfacing frippery. Mazda’s signature smiling grille is present, but otherwise, there are no large intakes, big exhaust tips, or other typical sports car cues. But the Iconic SP does mark the return of pop-up headlights, with the slim LEDs hiding behind a small cover when not in use.
Despite the Miata-inspired design cues, the Iconic SP is more like an RX-7 revival both in size and purpose. At 164.6 inches long, 72.8 inches wide, and 45.3 inches tall, it’s 10.5 inches longer, 4.5 inches wider, and 3.3 inches lower than the current ND MX-5 Miata, and the Iconic SP’s 102-inch wheelbase is 11.1 inches longer.
Mazda says that a two-rotor engine is mounted in the center of the car which helps give a perfect weight distribution and a low center of gravity. With a stated weight of 3,197 pounds, the Iconic SP is also around 850 pounds heavier than a Miata but still lighter than the vast majority of existing electrified vehicles. We don’t know the size of the battery or electric motor or how powerful they are but Mazda says the total output is more than double that of a Miata.
By far the most outlandish concept of the group, the Nissan Hyper Force concept is a pretty blatant preview of the long-awaited R36 GT-R. This supercar’s carbon-fiber body looks straight out of a sci-fi movie, mixing dramatic angles and flat surfaces with some wild, active aerodynamic elements. Its massive chin, extreme diffuser, and big rear wing provide tons of downforce, and the grille shape and round taillights are obvious GT-R cues. Nissan and Polyphony Digital worked on the in-cabin graphics of the previous GT-Rs. The Hyper Force has several screens that can be moved around the driver in a variety of ways, and when the car is not in motion, it can be used as a virtual reality gaming setup.
Nissan has begun work on a solid-state battery pack for the Hyper Force. Nissan’s first solid-state batteries will enter pilot production in Japan in 2024, with the first production EV using them to go on sale by 2028. It’s unknown how many electric motors the Hyper Force uses, but Nissan says it makes a whopping 1,341 horsepower that’s sent to all four wheels via the brand’s e-4ORCE technology.
In traditional Subaru fashion, the Sport Mobility is implied to be all-wheel drive and potentially have rear-wheel steering, but we don’t know any further details. Subaru is likely to continue sharing platforms and powertrains with Toyota, so the production car could use Toyota’s upcoming solid-state batteries. Subaru has said it will launch three new EVs by 2026, but all of them will be SUVs using as-yet-unknown powertrains and platforms. Subaru has also said that it’s working on a fully electric next-generation WRX STI for later this decade, and a coupe could definitely be spun off of that car. A potential BRZ replacement would be at least a few years away anyway, so here’s hoping the Sport Mobility comes to fruition.
Air Mobility, a flying vehicle similar to a car, is on the stand above Sport Mobility, and has a funny set of head- and taillights. While it is just a static model, the company says it is actually working on real-life flight demonstrations with engineers.
The FT-Se, Lexus, and Other Next-Generation Electric Vehicles: What Can They Tell Us About Toyota?
We can make some fairly solid assumptions despite Toyota’s lack of information for the FT-Se. Toyota says it shares a modular architecture and many components with the brand’s other next-gen EVs, including a gigacasted body and new prismatic battery cells that are slimmer and mounted behind the occupants to give it mid-engine weight distribution and handling characteristics. Toyota will most likely have a rear-biased all-wheel-drive system for the FT-Se that they show in their images. The FT-Se also seems like the ideal candidate for the simulated manual transmission that Toyota is developing for EVs.
The Lexus brand also revealed a pair of concepts based on Toyota’s next-gen EV architecture. An IS-sized production car coming in 2026 will have twice the range of existing electric vehicles, while the LF-ZL is a luxury SUV with less immediate production intent. Lexus displayed the Electrified Sport concept in 2021, but it’s still looking for a high- performance EV sports car.
The current most popular EV in Japan is the Nissan Sakura (and its Mitsubishi eK X twin), a tiny kei vehicle with a price tag of around $13,000 that has accounted for more than half of EV sales this year. Other brands will be coming out with other electric kei cars over the next few years, capitalizing on the microcar segment that makes up more than one-third of all car sales in Japan.
