The Prius That Shook.. - VFAQ Prius Site

coming up with several designs but before building a
prototype. The project proceeded no further than theory. Even
though Shiomi wanted to develop a car that met the demands of
a low-emission vehicle, a car designed with four motors and
four inverters proved to be too costly. Shiomi, therefore,
changed his strategy to developing a pure EV that used a
motor and a decelerator. Even though the working group had
been disbanded after a year, the Electric Vehicle Division was
established within the Vehicle Development Center III when the
Center System was introduced in September 1992. EV
production was carried over, and a design for RAV4EV was
finally hammered out.
Electric Vehicle Division was organized by engineers from
each technology department and the FA System Division,
which was a part of the production technology department.
Several people were transferred from the earlier working
group as well. One of them was Kubo from FA System
Division.
A strange order
Kubo never volunteered to be in that department.
Having written his thesis on combustion analysis of
diesel engines, he naturally wanted to go into engine
design, but he had been assigned to the production
technology division instead. For the first seven or eight
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