Reuters: No longer the beast, Toyota strives for beauty - Nov 7, 2011
Looks like that car company is getting a healthy dose of reality.
Toyoda surprised even his chief engineer, Takeshi Uchiyamada, with last year's shock tie-up with Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O) after only a month after hitting it off with the electric vehicle start-up's young founder, Elon Musk. In the end, the executive vice president credited Toyoda for achieving his main goal of having the Silicon Valley company's entrepreneurial spirit rub off, at least on a small scale.
When the Tesla team came up with an electric prototype of Toyota's RAV4 crossover in just three weeks to display at the Los Angeles auto show, young Toyota engineers challenged themselves to do it faster.
"They used their own free time and converted an old (Toyota) MR-S sports car into an electric car in 16 days," Uchiyamada recalled earlier this year. "If we did things the old way, we wouldn't even have a proposal in that time."
Looks like that car company is getting a healthy dose of reality.