Last year Toyota has announced its intention to build the ultimate SUV, a space utility vehicle, and now it has a name…

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has ambitions of making a moon landing by 2030 and it requires a vehicle for astronauts to drive on the surface. Toyota has vast experience in conquering tough terrain with vehicles such as the Land Cruiser and you should therefore not be surprised that the forthcoming space vehicle has been named the Lunar Cruiser.

As Japan’s largest automotive company, Toyota was an obvious candidate for this project and the renderings you see here provide some indication of what the Lunar Cruiser will look like.

Requirements are strict and call for a pressurised vehicle, capable of travelling vast distances while supporting two astronauts within its cabin. That last detail means that Toyota’s engineers will have to find extremely clever packaging solutions for the moon rover’s interior, as astronauts move about with their spacesuits on.

The Lunar Cruiser is expected to be powered by fuel-cells and have a driving range of 10 000 km. The interior will also feature 13m² of work and living floor space. In terms of overall size, Toyota says the project specification is for a vehicle 6 m in length, 5.2 m wide and 3.8 m tall.

From the images Toyota has revealed of its first concept rendering, we can deduce that the Lunar Cruiser will also be six-wheel drive and features very interesting tyre and wheel technology.

Traditional pressured rubber tyres would not work on the moon and Toyota appears to be opting for a one-piece wheel design, where the entire structure is metal and designed in a way to allow for some flex.

A large deployable solar panel, using the latest solar energy harvesting technology, should help the Toyota Lunar Cruiser to augment its on-board fuel-cell provided range. The last vehicle to drive on the moon was back in 1972 and was extremely limited in range. With the Lunar Cruiser, the expectation is that it will allow for unprecedented exploration of the moon surface.

The development of the Lunar Cruiser is expected to be complete by 2029 with the moon mission taking place in 2030. 

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