Fast food, Japanese style

Seaweed wrapping itself around your ankles at the beach is far from one of life's great tactile pleasures. So as a nation of beachgoers, surely Aussies will regard the love of all things seaweed from the land of the rising sun as yet another example of the cultural divide between our two great nations.

Toyota is just about to widen that cultural gap further, with a hybrid-drive concept that will be unveiled to the Australian public at the Melbourne International Motor Show later this month. See, it's made from seaweed.

Named the 1/X to reflect its minimal impact on the environment, the concept car weighs 420kg and relies on a carbonfibre-reinforced plastic structure for safety, but the rest of the body draws upon naturally-occurring seaweed for its looks, aerodynamics and weather-sealing.

In future, project manager Tetsuya Kaida (pictured) hopes to use other natural materials, even for the structural parts.

"We used light-weight carbon-fibre reinforced plastic throughout the body frame for its superior collision safety -- but that material is made from oil," Kaida said, explaining the need for even the carbonfibre structure to migrate to a material that's renewable.

"In the future, I'm sure we will have access to new and better materials, such as those made from plants -- something natural, maybe something like paper.

"In fact, I want to create such a vehicle from seaweed because Japan is surrounded by the sea. This is my dream."

According to Kaida, the technology has application for vehicles ranging in size from Yaris up to LandCruiser, once it can be commercialised. Japan's lack of mineral resources has long been a problem and seaweed is plentiful in a country of islands.

The 1/X (which is pronounced with some difficulty as "one-xth"), is powered by a 500cc internal-combustion range-extender and the vehicle is a plug-in hybrid, allowing batteries to be recharged from a home powerpoint. Motive power is by an electric motor mounted between the axles and driving the rear wheels.

Harvesting seaweed is presumably less carbon-intensive than creating steel from iron ore -- and if it means less seaweed at the beach, who are we to complain?