Empathy drives: How a Toyota chief engineer crafts NEO Steer for Paralympian colleague's Land Cruiser 200

Taiki Morii is not a name that most Malaysians will know unless they follow winter sports. Keeping it brief, Morii is an avid Alpine skier who has been dedicating himself to the sport since his school days. Unfortunately, his sports career - with sights set on the Olympics - was cut short at the age of just 16, when a motorcycle accident damaged his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

How a young boy with such a bright future came to terms with having his healthy body taken away from him so abruptly, and not fall into self-pity is worthy of a book.

The truth is, Morii was depressed for nearly 2 years. At the lowest point of his life, he refused to cooperate with his rehabilitation exercise, and was demotivated from life. He was only able to summon enough strength to continue pursuing his dream in 1998, when a wheelchair salesman showed him video clips of the 1998 Nagano Winter Paralympics, and introduced him to the world of chair skiing.

Fast forward to today, Morii is a 3-time Paralympian in chair skiing - the alternative to skiing without legs, as demonstrated in the video below.

Morii also keeps a day job at Toyota’s headquarters in Aichi, in the company’s Government Affairs Division. Like many people who work in Toyota, Morii loves cars. He drives around in a Toyota Land Cruiser 200, modified with hand controls. His left hand operates a lever that controls the accelerator and brakes, while he steers with his right hand.

Morii's job in Government Affairs, which also includes homologation of new models, ensuring that all new models comply with the necessary regulations before they are launched to the market, puts him in close contact with colleagues from the engineering side of Toyota. One such colleague is Keita Moritsu, Chief Engineer of Toyota’s internal MJ Mid-Size Company, the unit responsible for the Land Cruiser, the same car Morii is driving.

At that time, Moritsu was developing three Land Cruiser models - the Land Cruiser 200 minor change (facelift), the new-old Land Cruiser 70, and first-ever Land Cruiser 250. The latter is a successor to the Land Cruiser Prado, positioned below the Land Cruiser 300. Meanwhile, the new-old Land Cruiser 70 is a classic that has been re-engineered to comply with today’s regulations, thus the close working relationship with Morii.

Over the course of their relationship, Moritsu, via a conversation with then-President and current Chairman Akio Toyoda, learned more about Morii's difficulty in getting around in his modified hands-control Land Cruiser 200.

As someone who love cars, Morii wished to be able to drive by keeping both hands on the steering wheel. The current hands-control setup didn’t allow him to experience a car’s dynamic abilities to its fullest.

Also, Morii has to drive long distances, up to 8 hours, to reach his ski practice spot, which is often covered in thick snow, which is also why he trusts his Land Cruiser so much. Since he can only steer with one hand, his upper body gets tired even before he begins his practice. Thus, he is rarely able to start his practice in his optimum form.

“Someday, I would like to have something that would allow me to control the accelerator and brakes while holding the steering wheel with both hands,” is a wish Morii shared with his Toyota colleagues.

His colleagues on the engineering side, especially Moritsu, found it to be borderline insulting if Toyota were to keep its Mobility For All tagline but is yet unable to build a car that can be enjoyed to its fullest by their Paralympian colleague.

Moritsu took a look at the current setup used on Morii’s Land Cruiser, before conceptualizing NEO Steer. At the Japan Mobility Show, we caught up with ‘Mr. Land Cruiser’ Keita Moritsu, to learn more about his NEO Steer project.

Moritsu explained that NEO Steer is short for New Era Operating Steering. To meet the objective of allowing Morii to steer with both hands, the starting point for NEO Steer was a motorcycle. Moritsu noted that the solution to developing a hand-based steering, throttle, and brake control system is already being used on motorcycles for decades, so why reinvent the wheel?

The challenge, however, was to accommodate the much larger turning radius required by cars, and since the steering control is no longer a wheel, the steering can’t turn more than 180 degrees.

Solving this is easy. Steer-by-wire variable ratio steering is already offered in many high-end cars. In some markets, the Toyota bZ4X is already offered with a 150-degree lock-to-lock turn, variable ratio steer-by-wire system.

Moritsu didn’t say how much of NEO Steer is based on the bZ4X, emphasizing that this is still work in progress, and the next step is to trial different layouts for steering control-mounted buttons - how to integrate ADAS and infotainment buttons.

“Our image is for NEO Steer to not only be used by wheelchair-dependent drivers, but also elderly drivers who have weak legs,” explained Moritsu.

At its current form, NEO Steer doesn't have turn signals yet. Moritsu says the team has yet to come a decision, but a thumb-operated button setup, similar to the one used by Tesla's 'yoke' steering is being considered. However, unlike Tesla, Toyota's solution won't suffer from silly hand-over-hand motion required by Tesla, as Toyota uses variable ratio steering that tightens at low speeds, and loosens at higher speeds, so you won't need to make more than one full turn of the steering, thus negating problems with switching turn signals mid way.

Visitors to the Japan Mobility Show were invited to try Neo Steer on a video game-like simulator, but unlike Sega's Daytona 500 arcade game, you play this while standing, demonstrating that one can even operate the vehicle without using their feet.

Accelerating is easy, with just a gentle push of the thumb. It doesn’t tire you even when driving long distances. Braking is done via one of two bicycle brake-like handles on each side. Operating either one of the handles is sufficient to control all four brakes, but just like a bicycle, the driver can pull both handles too.

As for steering-wheel mounted buttons to control the audio and ADAS, several options are being considered. One involves a touchscreen that can toggle between different display modes, but the team is not so keen on this, for obvious reasons of driver distraction.

The preferred option is to have buttons for infotainment on one side, and ADAS on the other side of the steering – it’s not too different from the current setup with a conventional steering wheel. Airbag placement is also not a big issue.

Toyota is serious about putting the NEO Steer into production. As it is, Toyota, like many Japanese car makers operating in a market with an increasingly ageing Japanese population, is well ahead of anyone else in selling factory-built, wheelchair-friendly cabin ‘Welcab’ cars. No other country - not USA, not Korea, Germany, not even the supposedly very humanistic Swedes, and certainly not China - offer such cars from the factory.

Some years back, then-President and current Chairman Akio Toyoda once said that 'producing ‘Happiness for All,’ rather than producing cars, is the real goal for Toyota. Cars are just one way of producing happiness for customers. The goal is always, delivering happiness through freedom of mobility, because the freedom to move is a foundation of happiness.

This is why chief engineers like Keita Moritsu don’t see themselves as just salarymen, but as individuals paving the path to achieve Mobility For All.

Remember also that Morii only managed to pull himself out of depression because a wheelchair salesman didn't get out of bed merely to sell wheelchairs, but took pride in providing mobility solutions in what little way he can. He didn’t just sell Morii a wheelchair. He sold him the strength to keep moving forward in life, which allowed Morii to get a job at Japan's most respectable automotive mobility company.

There, Toyota's best and brightest, people like Keita Moritsu took over, building on a foundation left behind by someone he never met. Eventually, someone else too will take over from Moritsu once Toyota perfects the technical solution for Morii's next Land Cruiser, and the cycle continues.

These are the things that make Japan so special. They have a word for it – ikigai – their reason to exist.