NI Human Interview

DENSO Corporation

Dr. KUNIHIKO HARA

Board Member, Director of Basic Research Laboratories (Dr., Eng.)

From Heaters to Semiconductor Devices.

The enterprising spirits made the prosperity.

-- DENSO is known as the large corporation whose sales are beyond two trillion yen, isn¡Çt it? But, I think what kind of project has been developed is not so famous except for ¡ÈDENSO car air-conditioner.¡É

HARA ? You¡Çre right. Before being separated from TOYOTA MOTOR CO. in 1949, DENSO was one of the factories of TOYOTA, named ¡ÈKARIYA factory.¡É In those days, we had hoped to be a number one corporation in Japan, not only in TOYOTA group. From the desire, we named our corporation ¡ÈNIPPONDENSO¡É but in 1996, we thought it was too small dream that just become the top of Japan. So, we took ¡ÈNippon¡É away from the name and changed it to ¡ÈDENSO¡É. Two years ago, our corporation was just 50 years old.

You might know from our history, we ¡ÈDENSO¡É started as a corporation of producing key-components of cars. For example, the starter or the dynamo, we produced the fundamental parts of cars, which supported to drive, to stop and to turn. And then, we hoped to make a comfortable driving environment, changing from the nasty one: cold in winter and hot in summer. We have started to produce heaters since 1949, and car air conditioners since 1957. The heaters in winter and the car air conditioners in summer; this is the first term history. Meanwhile, the environmental pollution of exhaust gas was took up as a social problem by Ralph Nader who was a famous consumer-right advocate in America, and the method of cleaning exhaust gas was studied. DENSO started to produce electronic products in addition to mechanics because cleaning exhaust gas needed electronics. It was the episode in the middle of 1960¡Çs.

According to those backgrounds, in 1968, we set up IC laboratory, which was the first challenge among the car manufacturers in the world. It was to say, we tried to operate our car by our own semiconductor devices. That was a reckless challenge, I think. But now, after 30 years since then, I would say it was a correct decision. Today, there are electronics in a bonnet of almost all cars. The temperature in a bonnet is 100 degrees C in summer and -50~-60 degrees C in winter, if the car was parked outside in a suburb of Moscow. There were no semiconductor devices working in the poor environments like that. So, we tried hard to produce semiconductor devices that work in severe environments, and as the result of that, we could produce today¡Ç rugged electronic products. DENSO¡Çs history was made that way.

Now, ITS (Intelligent Transport System) attracts social attention, but from now on, safe and comfortable society will be realized. In this society, information can be exchanged between loads and cars or a car and another car. Thinking of that, DENSO had chosen a better way to get ahead in these 50 years.

-- Anyway, DENSO produces a lot of kinds of products not only components of cars but also cellular phones or water purifiers and so on.

HARA ? Everyone is surprised to hear about a water purifier. The reason why we have started to produce a water purifier was that we have had skills to produce air conditioners and the filters. You may have an experience of bad smell when you turn on an air conditioner, which haven¡Çt been used for a long time. The smell was caused by mold. So, the skills of preventing bacteria and mold are necessary for producing good air conditioners. Furthermore, the filter is necessary for car engine, because it protects engine from dust and rust powders. To combine these skills, filtering and prevention against bacteria and mold, we were able to produce water purifiers. That is the episode of producing the water purifier, which was called ¡ÈMs. Junko¡É.

The Three Decades, with the Progress of Electronics.

-- I see. The reason why DENSO could stand in today¡Çs depression is that it has its definite technologies. Well, Mr. HARA, what kind of research have you been engaged in yourself, for example?

HARA ? I joined this corporation in 1969 when an IC laboratory was just established. So I¡Çm a member of the first freshmen. It means that my own history as a man of business was together with that of car electronics.

There were three turning points at every decade. In the first decade, we tried to produce rugged semiconductor devices, which could be used in a car, at IC laboratory. In the next decade, from 1980 to 1990, we set up the research section to do research on car components fundamentally by the level of physical property. For example, we produced filters and sensors of carbon dioxide besides the parts of semiconductors or illuminant electronics materials. We started it from one desk and one telephone.

In the last decade, I moved to a research laboratory and got down to a huge theme that doing a research for continuing our corporation¡Çs development perpetually toward the 21st century. Before setting up a research laboratory, we planned to visit Silicon Valley that was the center of the frontier laboratories. But since we had no skills to give, we were allowed just to take pictures of the buildings at some laboratory (laughter). That was our first step. After a decade, we grew as a large corporation, which has seven laboratories.

-- What kinds of research were carried out at the research laboratory?

HARA ? We do research about human-machine interface. It is the interface, which drivers can easily exchange information with their cars. For example, the speech recognition software was on sale. Today, all cars of TOYOTA are equipped with the artificial intelligence of speech recognition, which was developed by our research laboratory. In addition, we do research on the next- generation mobile communication systems and the power electronics.

Producing Safe, Ecological and Fun-to-Drive Cars

-- Although, cars are very useful, there are a lot of severe problems like traffic accidents or environmental pollutions, on the other hand. Is there any technique to prevent these problems?

HARA ? Yes, of course. Nowadays, there are three kinds of social needs with cars. The first one is how safe the cars are. The second is how ecological, and the last one is how fun it is to drive. As you know, the airbag is a typical technique of safety measures. But, isn¡Çt it strange? The more safety airbags become, the more pedestrians will get hurt. It might not be the true safety measure. Essentially, the safety cars should save both drivers and pedestrians. That is to say, we have to produce a car with preventive safety measures, which will never crash. It is the show time for the electronics.

In these days, ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control), epoch making product, made by cooperation of TOYOTA and DENSO was equipped with TOYOTA-made cars. It is the system of measuring the distance between the car and the car driving in front. If the car driving forward slowed down the speed suddenly, the system could escape own car from crash. I think you have an experience that you paid attention to your cellular phone as it was ringing, and nearly caused the accident by delaying of stepping on the break. In this case, the system works effectively. I think the pursuit of safety will be going to develop in the field of preventive safety measure. DENSO will handle all kinds of these developments.

Thinking about the ecological car, we are developing a car, which is economical on gas, like PRIUS. A fuel-efficient car means a car with little exhaust. There is electronics, by means of that the computer calculates to keep the most ecological condition. When I entered the company, there were only two semiconductor devices used in a car, one was a part of the car radio; the other was the diode producing DC from AC dynamo. But now, the car is like a mass of semiconductor devices.

-- It looks almost impossible to repair the circuit of the mass of semiconductor devices. I think the broken parts would be just wastes.

HARA ? Certainly, the problems of recycling are great significant issues. Now, DENSO is devising to design products for recycling by trying to produce things without waste, what is called zero-emission. About a zero-emission, we have already operated a factory, which is 100% zero-emission.

Today, there are seventy million cars in Japan, so a car is provided to 1.9 people. In America, a car is provided to 1.3 people. In Asia, except Japan, there are seventy million cars for 31.8 hundred million people. Someday, the environmental pollution would be a huge problem, if Asian own cars in the same percentage in Japan. Thinking this way, it is necessary for us to develop more ecologically.

-- Well, the car industry is important in the world not only in Japan, so it has a heavy responsibility.

HARA ? Actually, the car industry is an industry that covers huge areas. Thinking about a car, there are a lot of materials in it. For example, there are steel, glass, semiconductor and rubber. I think it is hard to find the other product, which is produced by combination of so many industries like cars. And the car industry has 10% of employment in all industries. It is said that the decline of cars and the decline of related industries equal to the decline of a nation. At that point, we must progress with a strong sense of responsibility.

But, we won¡Çt change our mind to produce safe, ecological and fun-to-drive cars. We will do our best to produce high-level products.

On the other hand, the society with cars will change by the development of the Internet ITS. For example, if a car turned on the windshield wiper, we could know the area where the car exists is rain. The area in which the car is located can be determined by the car navigation. If the data of the car could be connected to an information center, we could get the information of the address of the rainy area and rainfall by the speed of the windshield wiper. That is to say, the car can be a sensor. This technique will apply in various cases, not only for the weather forecast. The car will work as a nature interface, indeed.

If the cars and roads could exchange information interactively by VICS (Vehicle Information & Communication System), we were going to take it for granted to using on-line searching for finding the shortest way with avoiding a traffic jam.

In addition, I think we have to focus on the mental side of drivers. When we truly aim to produce comfortable cars, cars may work as sensors of the mental side of drivers. Thinking like that, cars are important machines just as interfaces between cars and men or roads (nature).