2003 Tokyo: Toyota's PM is transportation for one
By JAMES B. TREECE | Automotive News
TOKYO -- The one-seat electric Toyota PM, for Personal Mobility, is one of the few wacky wheels on display at this year's Tokyo Motor Show.
It rises to a height of 73.0 inches for the driver to enter or exit, which involves raising the canopy, and in city driving for better visibility and maneuvering.
For high-speed driving, the PM lowers to a height of 47.8 inches, and lengthens from 68.9 inches to 104.3 inches. The front wheels turn independently of each other. With both turned in, the PM can rotate, for a turning radius of just 47.2 inches.
Headlights stick out and move like an insect's antenna. Some 2,500 light-emitting diodes on the side panels continually shift color at a slow pace, like a 1960s light show. On-board electronics include camera phones that allow the driver to see and chat with other PM drivers in the vicinity. A demonstration showed this feature was as distracting to driving as it sounds, and just as likely to appeal to a generation raised on mobile phones.
If one driver in a pod of four PMs recommends a nearby restaurant and wants to lead the way there, the others can hook up -- with the lead PM doing all the steering and the others following like electronically linked train cars.
The PM will be on the road, in a revised version known as the i-unit, for the Aichi Expo of 2005. For now, though, its main goal is to get the kids, and their parents, to the Toyota stand.
ma quando la piantano con questi cass di pollici?