On Tuesday, February 14, the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) is holding a "JARI plug-in HEV workshop" in Japan.

We would appreciate any reports from anyone who attends -- and background on the people involved in making this happen.

Information at:
http://www.jari.or.jp/­ja/­topics/­hevWorkshop.html
-- a Japanese-language page. You can use the
machine-language translation tool at
http://www.google.com/­language_tools (use
"Translate a web page from Japanese to English (BETA)"

Below is information a correspondent sent to me (in addition to these names, I see several Japanese Universities and Hitachi listed as participating)

JARI will provide simultaneous interpretation (Japanese <-> English). 10:10-10:55
"The role of PHEV in the energy policy" Department of Energy (DOE), USA

11:15-12:00
"Conditions to widespread PHEVs"
Patrick Coroller
Transport Engineering Dept.
Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie (ADEME)
French Agency for Environemnt and Management of Energy

14:30-14:45
"Expectation for PHEVs, from administrative view point" Shinsuke Ito, Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, Japan

14:45-15:00
"Current status of PHEV technology" Takehisa Yaegashi, Toyota Techno Service Co (100% subsidiary)