Toyota looks to electric car business
The Toyota FT-EVII is a new electric concept car based on the iQ platform.
(Credit: Automotive News)Although a leader in hybrid cars, generally conservative Toyota has seemed uninterested in developing electric cars--until now. At the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota unveiled the FT-EVII, an electric car concept.
Toyota does away with a traditional steering wheel in favor of modern art.
(Credit: Automotive News)In putting together the FT-EVII, Toyota used its own off-the-shelf technologies, such as the iQ platform and components from its Synergy hybrid system. Although not on sale in the U.S., gasoline- and diesel-powered Toyota iQs are sold in Japan and the U.K. For the power train, Toyota went to lithium ion batteries for the FT-EVII, as opposed to the nickel-metal-hydride power pack from its current hybrid vehicles.
Where many electric cars in development, such as the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi iMiev, are specified to get about 100 miles range, Toyota only proposes 56 miles for the FT-EVII, and a top speed of 62 mph. These figures limit its use to sprawling metropolises, such as Tokyo, London, and New York.
Toyota also wanted to break away from traditional notions of automotive performance, so did away with a conventional steering wheel or foot pedals. Instead, the FT-EVII gets a weird-looking yoke, a piece of sculpture that supports an instrument cluster, navigation device, and a cup holder.
Toyota modified its hybrid badge, replacing the blue inset with a yellow one.
(Credit: Automotive News)The FT appellation, which we previously saw when Toyota announced the FT-86 concept, also on display at the Tokyo Motor Show, stands for Future Technology. We expect to see many more FT concept cars from Toyota in the coming years.
Only lately they joined into this trend after learning another fleecing of American Taxpayers trick. The trick is that they plan to sell their hybrids at $47K, for a paltry range of 12 miles AER using small batteries. We know they can make plug-in cars with 12 miles AER at less than $28K using the Prius base models. But they have set the price so high, because, it is the competition, and then they will request (maybe they already have) the Department Of Energy for funding the test fleets, and the DOE will buy these "test" fleets at a price of $47K each, perhaps ordering by the thousands for various government offices, to be tested until 2012. That will be several hundred million dollars of easy money gouged from the American Taxpayers through the DOE. So now, they know how to make easy money by joining into this plug-in industry.
It is just following the competition, just like the Volt, where the DOE has already purchased several cars to be deployed for real world testing. This is just one of the strategies that car manufacturers will try to fleece out the US government as they receive assistance, through these test fleets that are priced beyond reason.
It will take some time for these plug-ins to really come down in prices. They will just have to fleece the government and the early adopters first. Perhaps, by 2012, the prices of Volt, Tesla Sedan, and Toyota will come down to more sane levels, like around $30K, and by that time, significant advances in battery technology have taken place and the prices of the batteries and other electrical components have come down already.
Well, we just have to welcome Toyota into the electric fold, they also found a way to make easy money out of the US taxpayers.
Wear a tin foil hat lately?
How do you think NASA put men on the moon, through the benevolence of private corporations? Sometimes the government has to invest in technologies because private corporations are too shortsighted to make long term investments.
Oh, that new fangled thing you used to leave your comment, AKA the Internet, was started by the government. If you do not like the so called fleecing of the US taxpayers, then get off the Internet pronto.
Mandate with this Congress? The "Gummit" on Capitol Hill will NEVER turn its back on that sort of money that the energy industry pays out, no matter what any President may want, promise or say. Besides, there are environmentalists who are already grousing about the land impacts and usage inefficiencies inherent with solar array fields and wind farms given just how much ROOM it takes to get any sort of reasonable electricity production to make it worth it.
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by make_or_break
October 22, 2009 12:16 AM PDT
- Wonder how something like this one will do in an offset head-on with the Camry; I'm sure the IIHS is already booking the test time as we speak.
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