Toyota Unwraps EV Concept, Says Plug-Ins, More Hybrids On The Way

Toyota's concept electric vehicle is a light-duty runabout based on Japanese-market iQ commuter car.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

The battery-electric city car concept Toyota Motor Corp. will unveil Sunday afternoon in Detroit at the North American International Auto Show is confirmation, the automaker said today, of Toyota's intent to begin selling an urban EV by 2010.

In a pre-show statement, Toyota's chief US spokesman also said the automaker, undaunted by the present collapse of auto sales around the globe, intends in the next few years to :

• intensify the launch of conventional hybrid models;
• push development of plug-in hybrids that can run solely on electric power for extended periods, and ;
• use concepts like the city EV to expand its alternative vehicles efforts beyond the hybrid technology it has helped perfect.
  

Toyota's hybrid push begins Sunday with the 2010 Prius and 2010 Lexus HS250h hybrids being unveiled during the auto show's opening media day.

iQ With Batteries

Photos released today (top, right and below) show the Toyota electric car, the FT-EV Concept, as a tiny two-seater based on the popular Toyota iQ urban commuter car launched last year in Japan.

Toyota says the FT-EV concept is an attempt to examine a car that would fit the needs and lifestyle of an urban dweller who drives no more than 50 miles a day and uses public transit for longer trips.

"Last summer's $4-a-gallon gasoline was no anomaly, it was a brief glimpse of our future" Toyota spokesman Irv Miller said in a statement released with the photos.

"We must address the inevitability of peak oil [the point at which global production begins to decline] by developing vehicles powered by alternatives to liquid-oil fuel, as well as new concepts, like the iQ, that are lighter in weight and smaller in size," said Miller, group vice president for environmental and public affairs at Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.