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Komiyama They call this kind of thing “backcasting.” You have a goal that says
this how things will be in the future, and then you decide what kind of technology
to bring to bear.
Uchiyamada Yes, that’s right.
Komiyama For techies, that kind of thing is a big incentive, isn’t it?
Uchiyamada Yes, that’s right. However, while it’s fine to set goals, everyone has
the awareness that the road to be travelled is going to be a fairly rough one. For
example, the Prius did not take off in the marketplace right away, and what’s more
when we released it the business was in the red. If we had kept pushing it under
those conditions, the red ink would balloon. It might be a bit overdramatic to say
this, but it would have been easy for the company to have collapsed on account of
the Prius. To popularize the model, we had to set the costs so we could generate
profits with a hybrid. Given that the costs did not come far enough just with mass
production, we completely rebuilt the Prius’ hybrid system when the next model
change came up. The cost of the second generation’s system was half that of the
first, while the third generation’s was one-third.
Komiyama That’s one of the effects of mass production, isn’t it?
Uchiyamada I think changing the design was a bigger factor than mass
production.
Komiyama That’s unexpected.
Interview
Komiyama They call this kind of thing “backcasting.” You have a goal that says
this how things will be in the future, and then you decide what kind of technology
to bring to bear.
Uchiyamada Yes, that’s right.
Komiyama For techies, that kind of thing is a big incentive, isn’t it?
Uchiyamada Yes, that’s right. However, while it’s fine to set goals, everyone has
the awareness that the road to be travelled is going to be a fairly rough one. For
example, the Prius did not take off in the marketplace right away, and what’s more
when we released it the business was in the red. If we had kept pushing it under
those conditions, the red ink would balloon. It might be a bit overdramatic to say
this, but it would have been easy for the company to have collapsed on account of
the Prius. To popularize the model, we had to set the costs so we could generate
profits with a hybrid. Given that the costs did not come far enough just with mass
production, we completely rebuilt the Prius’ hybrid system when the next model
change came up. The cost of the second generation’s system was half that of the
first, while the third generation’s was one-third.
Komiyama That’s one of the effects of mass production, isn’t it?
Uchiyamada I think changing the design was a bigger factor than mass
production.
Komiyama That’s unexpected.
Interview