On Tuesday, May 22nd from 3-4PM ET, Gather will host a live chat with Paul Williamsen. He is the national manager of Lexus College, serving Lexus, the luxury division of Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), U.S.A., Inc. Williamsen is responsible for leading teams that research, develop, and deliver courses on Lexus product knowledge, skill development, and customer satisfaction for Lexus dealer associates.
Lexus works to build vehicles that are exceptionally lean in their use of raw materials, their fuel, and t
heir impact on the environment. The design of lighter-weight vehicles means greater natural resource conservation, better fuel consumption, less emissions, reduced brake wear, improved handling and braking performance, and less scrap disposal. Plastic components used in the interiors and exteriors of Lexus vehicles are molded of a highly recyclable and lightweight material.
If you can't make it to the chat, please leave a comment or question for Paul Williamsen.
One participant in this week's chat will receive an herbal bath collection from Kneipp!
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Comments: 39
Mary Saunders
I am all for using environmental products being used but not at the expense of "life". I am very concerned about the safety of the vehicle. There is nothing more important than the safety of the human life in the vehicles. How are they rating in the safety tests??
I will attend the chat if I'm not in a meeting...but just in case here's my question:
I know that Subaru does not have any landfill waste for their US plant. Is Lexus doing the same (or working towards the same goal?). I thought this was a great bragging right for Subaru and I have not heard any other car companies say this as of yet. I believe it is important that international car companies have US plants but I don't want them polluting our land while employing our people. If Lexus/Toyota does this for their plants that would be helpful if they promoted it in their ads as well.
Lexus vehicles use a wide range of material, including recycled & recyclable plastics in the interior and exterior. In most cases, plastic is produced in the same country as the vehicle is built, so for a Lexus RX 350 built in Cambridge, Ontario, the plastic is predominantly sourced from the American midwest.
Vehicles we build in other countries typically use materials available locally that meet our specs for quality, cost, and recyclability.
Safety of the occupants of our cars is of paramount concern to Lexus. All Lexus models are designed, engineered, and tested to meet the highest possible safety standards. Material selections (metal or plastic; virgin material or recycled) are always based on safety criteria first.
For example, while the bumper cover may be made of plastic (for ease of repair and superior recyclability), the structure underneath is steel & aluminum, again selected for their ability to absorb impact energy, but also for recyclability.
We perform computer simulations of crash-tests, and then perform actual crashes against barriers designed to model as closely as possible actual vehicles on the road.
Concern for the environment is part of the DNA of Lexus & Toyota: we recognize that we share the same Earth with those who drive our cars and everyone else, too.
Our continued success, we feel, depends on finding increasingly clean ways for our cars to drive, our factories to run, and for my office (in a LEED Green Building) to operate.
Mustn't every business come to this conclusion eventually?
All Lexus models are designed, engineered, and tested to meet the highest possible safety standards. This means that they not only meet or exceed the stiffest U.S. standards required for sales here, but in cases where a European standard is tougher than the U.S. standard, we achieve that higher level of safety protection for the occupoants of our vehicles.
By the way, our newest models (since 2005) also have external energy absorbing designs & materials designed to lessen the injuries to a pedestrian who might be in traffic.
Our plant in Cambridge, Ontario, that builds the Lexus RX 350 has been producing zero-landfill waste for a number of years.
All plants that build Toyota, Lexus, and Scion cars & trucks are currently achieving the goal of having zero landfill waste. This is a key operating goal for our plants, just like quality, safety, and productivity.
While our ads tend to focus on the products, each of our assembly plants, factories, and offices in North America promote their environmental and charitable work in their local communities.
I was so impressed with the Prius a couple years back that I bought some Toyota stock. i have not regretted the decision. Your leadership in hybrid technology is far more impressive to me than the silly e85 technology pitched my Detroit for their big boxy unstable SUVs.
I wish that you would refuse to compete with them for the large pickup market, because I really hate those vehicles. I realize that profit is profit, but still- isn't the pickup truck a bit of a dead end for most of the american public by virtue of just not being fuel efficient? I suppose that there are a few farmers and construction contractors who actually use them.
Some people need a pickup truck for their jobs. And others (like myself) need a truck to get to where we live. I would not be able to get to my home in Maine without a truck. Others that just have a truck as a status symbol are a whole different breed. Some people have trucks because they have no choice. Many trucks now are formulated to work with alt fuels. Check out The Green episode FUEL to see what I mean...don't diss the truck drivers. You may not know the real reason they own a truck.
Our most popular, the RX 400h, is selling great - about one-fourth of all RXs sold in the U.S. are the hybrid version, which is a very strong percentage for a premium powertrain.
Said another way, they're selling about as fast as we can build them.
We've also introdcued the hybrid version of the GS luxury sport sedan, and the GS 450h hybrid is selling well.
We have recently announced the world's top hybrid, the LS 600h L premium luxury sedan, the first production V8 read-drive full hybrid. It will offer V12 performance with V8 fuel economy and V6 levels of emissions: there's a long waiting list for this model before anyone's driven it yet.
well, okay, point taken. It does not bother me to see a truck with something in the bed. But I know people who drive a pickup and never carry anything in it. I wonder if they bought it just in case somebody calls them up and says "you can have my antique wardrobe if you drive it away today....."
As for stability, I think that SUVs and Pickups are overrated sometimes. Unless you live on a mountain in a snowy state, a car will get you around. I just think that we are too slow to make "sacrifices" in the name of better fuel efficiency. We all agree that fuel efficiency is critical until we walk into the dealership, then we want big and shiny.
We look for opportunities throughout our processes to achieve our target of zero landfill waste.
- Nearly every part or assembly that comes into the plant arrives not in a recyclable carton, but a reusable one of plastic or metal: some are designed to fold flat so the plant can easily send the empties back to the supplier, and they come back full of parts a day or so later.
- Trimmings from seat-making (foam, fabric, and leather) are each collected separately and used in making recycled sound-absorption materials that keep the interior quiet.
- Steel stamping results in small odd pieces; they fall through the floor below the press to special basement level conveyors built into every Lexus & Toyota plant, easily carrying them away for recycling.
- Unused paint can be mixed together for non-critical undercoating. Even the small remaining bits of un-reusable paint sludge are saved during cleaning and used by brick-makers.
- Our manufacturing plant in Kentucky has a geodesic dome greenhouse to accelerate biodegrading of food waste from the employee cafeteria – they feed over 5,000 people per day.
This is a vital issue for Lexus; we are working towards designing vehicles with a 95% recovery rate. The recycling industry already does a good job of finding recylcable materials in scrapped cars, so we make our cars easy to disassemble to promote separation of different metals, plastics, etc. We even stamp marks on the bottom of the car so the scrap yeards can easily and safely drain the fuel, oil, and other liquids for recycling.
We are actively working with our material and parts suppliers to eliminate substances of concern: in the last decade we have dramatically reduce the use of lead in Lexus vehicle. We have already phased out the use of mercury in gauges, and are also building mercury-free HID headlamps.
how long, in your opinion, is it before we see a non-gasoline/diesel engine e.g. hydrogen, fuel cell, with or without the hybrid drive?
Also, on a more specific/technical note, how come the hybrid highlander is not recommended for off road use?
One of the most emailed articles in "The New York Times" today asks why Europe is greener than we are. Do you think that America will ever catch up to European standards? What would we need to do to do in order to make head way in this area?
Why is their not a Lexus all electric car that you can plug in anywhere?
No more fossil fuel please.
All Lexus models have an event data recorder that captures from the final seconds prior to an accident in which the airbags deploy.
The data is provided in aggregate (that is, not identified with any particular car or car owner) to federal safety organizations and researchers the use it to analyze trends in motor vehicle crashes.
I've got to run, but I really enjoyed this chat. I will look forward to watching The Green tonight. Especially with gas prices as high as they are!
Also, on a more specific/technical note, how come the Hybrid Highlander is not recommended for off road use?
Toyota is a world-wide leader in the development of prioduction-ready non-HC vehicles: we have a number of production-quality hydrogen fuel-cell hybrid vehicles currently in use in the U.S.
There are some remaining cost issues to overcome, in terms of the electric batteries needed for a hydrogen fuel-cell, and the fuel-cell cost and range of operating temperatures, but we'll get there.
The bigger issue is that of infrastructure: today you can fill your tank with gasoline at 175,000 gas stations in the U.S.; you can buy E85 at just over 500 filling stations, and just a few hydrogen filling labs serve all the hydrogen vehicles in the U.S. There are at least two I know of in our neighborhood of Southern California, some in Sacramento, and a couple near Chicago (Argonne Labs) and Washington DC.
Business models are being developed by companies in THAT industry that may someday make it worthwhile to start putting greater numbers of hydrogen vehicles on the road.
Tune into the Sundance Channel tonight to "The Green: Drive," Tuesday, May 22th at 9 p.m. to see Paul and learn more about Lexus' efforts to go green.
I am sorry that I missed this chat as it was interesting. I am glad that I did post my one question in advance.