Following November’s Tokyo Motor Show, which, by the way, seemed headed back to the prominent international status it once held—heck, the Europeans had some noteworthy unveilings after a couple shows of near nothing—Toyota bused a group of media out to Fuji Speedway to sample the full electric three-wheel i-Road city car. I know what you’re thinking: An electric trike thingy with a closed cockpit at a … racetrack? I had the same thought. They’re not actually going to have us lap this car, are they?
On a clear day, Mount Fuji overlooks the track like a regal king wearing a giant white fur coat, but on this morning the thick fall clouds left it completely concealed. Ready for a wake-up jolt of energy, I was eager to hit the track. Even if it was in a slow battery-powered vehicle, I needed to get my body moving and heart pounding. Alas, our first stop was not at the track but rather to an expansive meeting room with 100 tables and 500 chairs—the kind of space that resembles a college 101 class. And if you’ve been in a college 101 class, you know that in half of those lectures you, well, slept. Miraculously, I stayed awake (I thought for sure that the Japanese-to-English translation would do me in), my reward being real, actual time behind the wheel.
That wheel looks like a normal Toyota steering wheel, but the wheel—not wheels—it turns is absolutely abnormal. Rather than steer the two front wheels, like virtually every other car on the planet, the i-Road steers its single rear wheel. Moving and turning took plenty of acclimation, as the rear steering mimics the kind of oversteer usually reserved for high-speed maneuvers at the racetrack, not slow clips through a tiny cone course set up in a side parking lot. Further, the front wheels actively articulate up and down, resembling someone doing offset one-arm pushups, enabling the i-Road to lean up to 26 degrees in a turn and thus go 30-plus mph through a corner on three wheels.
Want to know what it’s like to pilot a “Star Wars” X-wing starfighter?
After my first stint, I went for another. And another. I still didn’t feel comfortable. But my adrenalin was flowing. Who knew 30 mph could do that? The odd feelings from the oversteer with the lean created sensations of flying. Want to know what it’s like to pilot a “Star Wars” X-wing starfighter? Take an i-Road for a spin.
Toyota is well into conducting sharing projects with the i-Road in Tokyo and Toyota City, Japan, and Grenoble, France, with more to follow in the future. The i-Road is designed for congested stop-and-go city life, not high-speed long-distance motoring on the open road, and it makes all the sense—and fun—in the real world.
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