The Environmental Research Department contributes to the prevention of public pollution by conducting research to develop regulations and improve testing methods to help solve various environmental issues and respond to increasingly sophisticated and complex environmental regulations and technologies.
From the perspective of analyzing issues and proposing measures to prevent global warming, reduce environmental impact, promote energy saving, and diversify energy sources related to means of transportation, we conduct research to contribute to environmentally friendly traffic behavior and the reduction of environmental impact, such as by developing regulatory values for better fuel efficiency and advanced methods for evaluating harmful substance emissions and noise.
Evaluating the environmental performance of fuel cell vehicles, electric vehicles, etc.
Toward the realization of carbon neutrality by 2050, we are conducting research on methods to evaluate the safety and environmental performance of fuel cell and electric vehicles, taking into account the specific effects of each type of vehicle (battery performance degradation, etc.). We are also studying methods to collect information on the performance of vehicles in use by utilizing onboard diagnosis (OBD) to improve performance evaluation methods.
Evaluating energy efficiency, effective emission substances, etc. in real-world environments.
We are studying methods for improving the reproducibility of test results on energy efficiency, hazardous emissions, etc. under actual driving conditions, as well as methods for fairly evaluating them in real-world environments.
Evaluation of noise emissions under actual driving conditions
We are conducting research on the evaluation of noise emitted from motor vehicles, particularly in accordance with actual driving conditions, with the aim of improving the efficiency of roadside inspections on public roads to identify illegal mufflers, etc.
Cross-disciplinary research
We are conducting research in cooperation with other research institutes, etc. to achieve carbon neutrality for commercial vehicles, which account for approximately 40% of CO2 emissions in the transportation sector. Specifically, we are building a simulation system in collaboration with external research bodies to optimize energy management and operation management.