KARIYA, Japan — In an industry under siege by electrification, steering system suppliers such as Japan's JTEKT Corp., the industry's segment leader, might be sitting pretty.
After all, electric vehicles still need to be steered down the road.
But JTEKT is feeling pressure to radically revamp to stay in step with the rapidly changing times. And the stakes are high for both JTEKT and its top customer, Toyota Motor Corp.
Here is a look at some of JTEKT's new product potential.
Their futures, like those of other suppliers and customers as the industry transforms itself with EV technologies, are inextricably intertwined. Toyota is JTEKT's biggest shareholder and leans on JTEKT for the bulk of its steering. JTEKT, meanwhile, relies on Toyota as its No. 1 customer.
JTEKT believes that if it can leverage its size, diverse product portfolio and half-billion-dollar R&D war chest, it will be able to thrive in the shifting landscape. But pulling that off requires a 10-year gamble on seeding new fields, says Takumi Matsumoto, senior executive officer in charge of JTEKT's automotive business unit and global R&D center.
"When we look at how the world is changing, we see the growth of electrification, carbon neutrality and [mobility as a service] using commercial vehicles. I see many ways we can make the best use of our products to contribute to such areas," Matsumoto said in an interview.
Matsumoto, who is also a director at JTEKT, is well positioned to confront the challenges of the new era. He joined the supplier in 2015, after a 29-year career at Toyota Motor, where he was general manager of the automaker's hybrid and electric vehicle division.
The overhaul of JTEKT, which traces its roots to 1921, shows how even mammoth auto suppliers are feeling the brunt of the industry upheaval.
JTEKT, which ranks No. 20 on Automotive News' list of the top 100 global suppliers, with worldwide parts sales of $11.31 billion in 2020, intends to tackle these challenges under a 2030 business plan called JTEKT Reborn.
The strategy calls for revamping the company's automotive unit by combining its steering and driveline systems business with part of the supplier's bearings unit to spur revenue growth.
It also calls for circling wagons with other Toyota Group companies. In fact, JTEKT moved its global headquarters from downtown Nagoya to the suburb of Kariya in 2020 to be closer to the seats of other Toyota group suppliers, including giants Denso Corp., Aisin Corp. and Toyota Boshoku Corp.
But most critically, the campaign calls for developing new products tailored to the new age.
On tap are a host of technologies that are still small scale but have potential to explode in scope with the arrival of electrified and self-driving cars.
The list includes:
The new technologies of EVs: The auto supply chain is changing with the rise of electric vehicles. Automotive News looks at how those changes are reshaping an industry.For starters, steer-by-wire systems build on JTEKT's pole position in the electronic steering segment. The supplier will begin mass production of its first steer-by-wire systems this fall, Matsumoto said.
JTEKT won't say who the customer is, but Toyota will introduce its first steer-by-wire system next year in a version of its new bZ4X all-electric crossover, which gets a futuristic Formula One-style steering yoke, instead of a circular wheel, which eliminates hand-over-hand turning.
The technology breaks the mechanical link between the driver and the wheels. Instead, the systems convert steering wheel movements into electronic signals that control electric motors to move the wheels. The systems save weight and open up valuable space in the vehicle's dash.
While the bZ4X is not self-driving, steer-by-wire is seen as a step toward autonomous driving. As automated vehicles finally find traction, JTEKT also aims to offer a "haptic shared control" technology that intuits driver intent and transmits road information to the driver through haptic pulses in the steering wheel. That project is in the R&D phase.
JTEKT also plans to better combine its expertise in bearing technology and automotive products. The future in that segment comes in the form of a new hub unit deployed in the redesigned Toyota Land Cruiser SUV that uses an innovative tapered bearing.
Hub units are wheel components that help the tires roll smoothly. By integrating the bearing and hub shaft through an improved design, JTEKT was able to reduce the component's weight by 11 percent, reduce its overall size by 5 percent and cut friction by 16 percent.
Because the new component weighs less, takes up less space and shaves the rolling resistance of the tire, JTEKT says the new hub design will be critical to all manner of new mobility, including EVs in which rolling efficiency is key.
But JTEKT's real plunge into the future is in completely new product segments.
Chief among them are lithium ion capacitors and precision motor gears envisioned for use in electrified vehicles, as well as components for hydrogen fuel cell systems.
The capacitors are short-term power storage banks that aid in energy flow in EVs. They can discharge bursts of power to boost acceleration, for example, and quickly recharge, helping alleviate the load on the main battery. They also work in a wider range of temperatures.
JTEKT sees them as having huge potential as auxiliary power sources for EVs, or as backup power for autonomous-driving systems, as Toyota Motor chases its target of 3.5 million EV sales globally by 2030.
JTEKT says the offering is the world's first high heat-resistant lithium ion capacitor. It can be used in environmental temperatures ranging from minus 40 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Aside from automotive applications, JTEKT also sees potential for the new technology in power-generation equipment and aerospace.
Capacitors pack only a tenth of the energy storage of a similarly sized lithium ion battery, but they have 10 times as much power. JTEKT supplied the system to a truck entered in January's 2022 Dakar Rally by Hino Motors, the truckmaking subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp.
"Capacitors will be very important in the shift to carbon neutrality," Matsumoto said.
JTEKT may lack deep experience in some of these new areas. But the Japanese supplier is confident it has a secret weapon that will enable it to break into the new business: cutting-edge know-how in the art of precision manufacturing, what the Japanese like to call monozukuri.
Through JTEKT's long-standing machine tool and bearings businesses, the company has a track record in making gears for a variety of industries. In autos, this includes the differential gears that transfer the engine's force from the main driveshaft and regulate the rotation of the wheels.
But in the dawning age of electrification, the need for differential gears is expected to fade away with internal combustion engines, as battery-powered motors independently power the wheels directly.
So last November, JTEKT set up a Gear Innovation Center to develop new gears for electric e-axles, the motor-inverter-transaxle setups expected to supplant today's engines and transmissions.
As Chinese players pour into EVs, Japanese suppliers such as JTEKT see a need to up their game in specialized high-tech parts. For JTEKT, that means leveraging monozukuri to develop precision gears that enable the motor to spin faster, with lower resistance and less noise.
Matsumoto called the move into precision gears "a game-changer."
"The conventional automatic transmission or CVT will be replaced by e-axles," Matsumoto said. "Gears are old-fashioned, so to speak. So when it comes to e-axles, we need to develop products that are structurally simpler but require more technological know-how."
JTEKT, for instance, prides itself on a technique of being able to manufacture two different gears from the same piece of metal, avoiding the necessity of welding together two separately machined gears. JTEKT says sophisticated manufacturing such as that is its secret weapon.
"This is a big business chance for us in the future," Matsumoto said.
Beyond autos, JTEKT is also banking on big growth in sales to robot makers because motors, bearings and gears are the key hardware for all robotics, Matsumoto said.
JTEKT has only begun its repositioning.
The first stage of JTEKT Reborn runs through early 2024 and focuses on "seeding" new businesses. The "harvesting" phase starts in 2028.
Among the challenges is reduced R&D spending, which still hasn't rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. Also of concern: the uncertainty of a worldwide industry beset by unprecedented change.
But President Kazuhiro Sato, another Toyota alumnus who joined JTEKT as an adviser before assuming the top post in 2020, said the parts maker must change with the times.
"During the little over six months until I assumed the role of president, I noticed three things that I thought were out of place," Sato wrote in the company's latest annual report.
Citing a need to integrate JTEKT's business units for better cross-functional synergies, and to leverage coordination with other Toyota Group suppliers, he embarked on JTEKT Reborn.
Said Sato: "This will generate innovative products and services never available before."
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