If you can’t say it in 140 characters, it’ll have to go in the blog
Posted by Colin Hensley on April 30, 2009 in Uncategorized
We started our @Toyota_Europe activity on Twitter in February this year, with some hopes and some trepidation (or is there already a word “tweetidation” meaning nervousness about the response to your tweet?) After the establishment of this blog, this is the next of our steps to try to engage with people who are interested in Toyota in Europe.
The first use of Twitter, is to let interested people (called followers) follow what we have to say. So our tweets include references to press releases or activities that are going on around Toyota.
I currently run the software called Tweetdeck on the second screen on my PC, which now has a continuous stream of tweets running down it. It actually reminds me a little of the digital rain in the movie The Matrix. One of the streams shows me all of the tweets that are being sent that mention Toyota. This is the second use of Twitter. By keeping an eye on this it is possible to see when people have questions or concerns about us, and when possible, we can respond directly to them.
As a reader of this blog, you may already be following us on Twitter, if not, you can find us @Toyota_Europe. I really hope to see you there, and have a chance to tweet together!
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Comments(0)Enjoying clean Swiss air - the show must go on!
Posted by Colin Hensley on March 08, 2009 in 360° approach, Design, Green Technologies
Those of you that follow our Twitter will know that I’m just back from the Geneva Motor Show. We had a very busy time at the show, for a number of reasons. Firstly because the industry is under intense scrutiny at the moment, as we are doing our best to weather a really tough crisis. Secondly, we launched the new Prius into Europe at our event last Monday evening, alongside the new Verso, (C-segment MPV.)
It was great to have a chance to meet Akihiko Otsuka, who is the Chief Engineer of the Prius, and to talk to him about his hopes, aims and anecdotes of when he led the team that developed the car. When I wrote a few weeks ago about the Prius and about the new engine, I couldn’t reveal that the CO2 figure for the combined cycle in Europe is just 89g/km. I also didn’t know all of the efforts that were made in so many areas of engineering the car to do everything to reduce the fuel consumption during real-life driving. I did know the CO2 figure on Monday, and that motivated me to really pick Otsuka-san’s brain. Next week, I’ll write a bit more technical blog on that, but for today I’ll leave you with one little gem. When developing the new Prius, Otsuka-san researched loads of things, even including large ships, which are know for running on highly efficient internal combustion engines. We can learn from everywhere, we just have to be unafraid to look.
