For Kevin Buckland's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Buses may not be the most glamorous mode of transport, but at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games they will represent Toyota Motor Corp.'s best bet for wider acceptance of hydrogen power — technology so far eclipsed by electric vehicles. Japan's biggest automaker plans to roll ...
Japan, China and South Korea have set ambitious targets to put millions of hydrogen-powered vehicles on their roads by the end of the next decade at a cost of billions of dollars. But to date, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) have been upstaged by electric ...
As SoftBank Group Corp. continues its transformation into a giant investment fund, some analysts are increasingly watching a metric more familiar to lenders as they judge its creditworthiness. And by that gauge, they say, its massive debt pile looks manageable. SoftBank's loan-to-value ratio, its net ...
To deliver an electric vehicle that's cheaper, safer and capable of traveling over 800 km on a single charge, the auto industry needs a breakthrough in battery technology. That's easier said than done. Scientists in Japan, China and the United States are among those struggling to ...
Toyota Motor Corp. has sold enough cars to put one outside every Japanese home. Now it wants to put robots inside those homes. Well-known for its automated assembly lines, Toyota envisions a not-so-far-off future in which robots transcend the factory and become commonplace in homes ...
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. shareholders' approval of the $62 billion (about ¥7 trillion) acquisition of Shire PLC is good news for its bosses' ambitions to build a global drug giant — but bad news for its credit ratings. The backing of what will be the largest-ever ...
Toyota Motor Corp., Asia's biggest carmaker, is preparing for a potential future where people don't buy cars. That's behind the hefty investments the company has made in ride-hailing providers, most prominently the $1 billion it poured into Southeast Asian leader Grab. Toyota sees the partnership ...
Chika Kako is a rarity in Toyota Motor Corp.'s upper echelons. Last month, the 50-year-old was promoted to the No. 2 job at the luxury Lexus division, becoming the only woman among the automaker's top 53 managers. President Akio Toyoda has made diversifying his executive ...
It's Japan's biggest custom-car show. The Tokyo Auto Salon has hundreds of exhibitors — from automotive titans like Toyota and Mercedes to tire makers, tool makers and toy makers — who all want to show you how to tune up, dress up, or otherwise ...
Toyota Motor Corp. issued an unsettling warning to Kentucky workers building its top-selling Camry sedan: Cut costs now or face an uncertain future. The automaker can build a Camry in Japan, ship it all the way to Kentucky and make more money selling that car ...
