Tokyo Motor Show

What's the secret to long-range urban electric driving in the tropics? Individualized overhead air-conditioning units, apparently. Tum Create, a collaboration between two engineering schools, Technische Universität München (TUM) in Germany and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, is currently showing off its Eva taxi at the Tokyo Motor Show.

The Los Angeles Auto Show is known for high tech rides that are as green as they are groundbreaking. This year, hydrogen fuel cell technology made a resurgence at the show, with the debut of Honda's FCEV concept and Hyundai's Tucson Fuel Cell. Meanwhile, Toyota unveiled their FCV concept at the Tokyo Motor Show just before the start of the 2013 LA Auto Show. We get the scoop on these three brand new hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

There's a lot to like about the Yamaha PES1 on display at the Tokyo Motor Show. Light and lithe, the electric motorcycle concept is a fine blade with which to slice through city traffic. It sits you upright, giving you a commanding view of the field of battle, but also allows you to easily tuck down for a quick sprint toward an advantageous opening in the enemy's armor.

We're set to record Autoblog Podcast #359 tonight, and we'll be joined by Michael Harley and Jonathon Ramsey to recap the Los Angeles Auto Show and Tokyo Motor Show. Check out the topics below, drop us your questions and comments via our Q&A module, and don't forget to subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes if you haven't already done so. To take it all in live, tune in to our UStream (audio only) channel at 10:00 PM Eastern tonight.

To reiterate what Editor-in-Chief Neff said in our LA Auto Show wrap-up from earlier today, let's never do this whole two-major-shows-in-one-week thing ever again. Oh sure, we handled it, doing our whole obsessively kicking butt thing on a global scale. But here we are, Friday evening, and we're spent.

Though most Formula One teams are based in the UK, they hail from places all around the world. There are teams from Russia, India and Malaysia, but in the 1960s, the idea of an F1 team coming from as far away as Japan was unthinkable in what was a predominantly European racing series. That's just the notion that Honda aimed to upset when it entered the car you see here in the 1964 Formula One World Championship.

In America, Nissan attempts to slake our kinschlepping needs with its slow-selling Quest minivan, but in Japan, where consumers seem a lot less reluctant to buy MPVs, there are a lot more models for every size family and budget. Nissan itself offers no fewer than six such minivans, including the popular Serena seen here.

Japan may be best known, at least among motorcycle enthusiasts, for its sport bikes. But as we found at the Tokyo Motor Show this year, Japanese motorcycle manufacturers are capable of producing all kinds of motorbikes. And to our delight, that includes cafe racers.

We take it for granted that women can enter just about any career they want now. But there are still countless occupations where females are underrepresented. You don't see too many women truckers, for example – particularly in a country that's still as deeply traditional as Japan. But Mitsubishi Fuso is showing just how forward thinking – and simultaneously, how traditional (pink polka dots are a bit 'on the nose') it can be with this hybrid pink truck.

As an automaker, Suzuki may be long gone from American shores, but it's still a force to be reckoned with in its home country of Japan. At this week's Tokyo Motor Show, the brand known as much for its two-wheeled fare as its four displayed a slew concept vehicles for both drivers and riders.

Even average production cars from Japan often seem very conceptual to US eyes. Throw in typical, nonsensical-quasi-English-words name like "Dayz Roox" and you'd be forgiven for thinking this Nissan box on wheels was still a designer's dream. But the fact is that the Nissan Dayz is a model currently on sale, and this Roox version is the latest take on the micro-van, which is a popular segment in Japan.

Honda has had a longer and more tumultuous relationship with Formula One than just about any other automaker. It had only been building cars for four years before it entered F1 in 1964 as the first Japanese team in the series, winning its first race the following season but shuttering the program a few years later. Honda came back to power the likes of Williams and McLaren to several World Championships in the '80s and '90s, but things took a downturn when it started a partnership and ultimately

Nissan has already shown its e-NV200 in Detroit and Frankfurt in conceptual form, now its home market is getting an up-close look at the production all-electric compact van at the Tokyo Motor Show. While it doesn't sound like the e-NV200 will be making its way to the US anytime soon, it will go on sale on sale in Europe in the middle of next year and in Japan by early 2015.

Taking a page from Renault and the Twizy – the page that says you don't need real doors on a tiny electric vehicle – Honda has unveiled a new version of its tiny MC-β EV. That's tiny in terms of overall size, battery capacity and range. Should it ever go on sale in Europe, the MC-β would be considered an L7 vehicle, which is a classification for vehicles that weigh 400 kilograms or less (not counting battery weight) with a maximum power output of 15 kW – typically mot

Yamaha and the inimitable Gordon Murray have teamed up to make a small but significant splash at the Tokyo Motor Show, showing Murray Design's long-promised small car project in the form of this MOTIV.e City Car electric vehicle.

Mitsubishi enjoys a long history of thinking outside the literal box when it comes to designing minivans and people movers. Remember the Mitsubishi Van, a.k.a. Delica? How about the Chariot, better known to us as the Colt Vista? The Expo and Expo LRV, the twin models that succeeded it? These were all left-of-center takes on the MPV genre, and while they never sold in large volumes, we can't help but look back at them with a mix of bemusement and respect for their oddball character. Who knows? A

The Tokyo Motor Show has proven to be far deeper and more interesting in 2013 than it has been in recent years, surely a trailing indicator of the revived auto industry in Japan and throughout the world. Still, we have seen a few concept cars that have been nearly 'recycled' from shows earlier in the season.

Mazda has received a tremendous amount of public and industry praise in the last few years, following up the successful introduction of its Skyactiv technology (powertrain and otherwise), with strong products like CX-5, Mazda6 and most recently, the Mazda3. At the Tokyo Motor Show, Mazda has taken yet another step forward with Skyactiv and the 3, showing the compact (called "Axela" in Japan) with an all-new compressed natural gas engine in the Skyactiv-CNG Concept.

Here we have the Nissan Leaf Aero Style, which the automaker says "offers 100% electric vehicle performance in a new stylish and sporty shape." We call it a Nissan Leaf with a not-terribly-attractive body kit and two-tone wheels. Suffice it to say, it's not much like the conceptual version Nissan showed off at the Tokyo Motor Show back in 2011...

In desperate need of some competitive new products, Mitsubishi showed up at the Tokyo Motor Show with three concept vehicles. The most important of them might just be this fullsize Concept GC-PHEV (Grand Cruiser). With its full-time four-wheel-drive system and roughly the right package size, we can only hope it hints at a future design for the Pajero/Montero.

Don't let its supremely polarizing appearance fool you, this is not the Lexus LF-NX Concept that you (probably) had a strong reaction to when it debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The German version of the concept car featured a variant of the Lexus Hybrid Drive system, while this LF-NX Turbo, well, it has "turbo" in the name, you see?