What other automaker would spend the time and expense of developing a new airbag just because, you know, airbags could be better? The same one who developed a new rail car for the same reason. The Japanese automaker has developed a new airbag it claims will give drivers better protection in accidents. The shaped bag uses a spiral seam to induce more even inflation, which provides a larger surface area and creates uniform pressure around the bag more quickly than in a conventional airbag system. Thus, the driver is cushioned sooner. The i-SRS system also uses a gas release valve that helps control airbag deployment and pressure, and holds the gas inside the bag until a preset time. The technology is already slated to appear on the Honda Life in Japan this November. Outside the vehicle, Honda will be adding a new multi-view camera to the upcoming JDM Odyssey, much like Nissan's Around View Monitor. Four wide-angle CCD cameras will be placed in the front, back, and on the side mirrors. Each view can be seen individually or combined for a computer generated aerial shot of the car's movements. Because they're wide angle, Honda has also incorporated a view with the front camera that extends the driver's line of sight in low-visibility intersections, such as when exiting a parking garage (see right pic). It sounds similar to the front-mounted camera system on the Rolls-Royce Phantom. Unfortunately there's no word on when either technology will come to the U.S.
Could the country that gave us the NSX, Godzilla -- and the other Godzilla -- and The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift be on the verge of giving up cars for good? With car buying down by close to 33-percent since 1990, Japan is claimed to be in the grips of kuruma banare, which, for Japanese carmakers, is the polar opposite of hakuna matata.
It's being labeled the "demotorization" process, and it involves large numbers of people in Japan's urban centers not buying cars. Surveys have revealed a variety of reasons, from the cost of purchase and ownership, to vehicles simply not being status symbols anymore, to cars being passé -- as in "so 20th century." The greatest worry is that young folks are simply not into cars, preferring cell phones and gadgets to Cubes and keis. Losing their audience before the love affair has even begun is no doubt causing JDM manufacturers to lose sleep.
And the even worse news is that the trend is expected to continue, with another 1.2-percent drop in sales predicted this year. Japanese carmakers are fighting the perception that cars aren't cool or worth the price by expanding their marketing and sales efforts in an attempt to form emotional bonds in other ways. It is certain, however, that they aren't the only ones interested in the outcome: Japan's kuruma banare is expected to befall Europe as well.
