Toyota to launch battery electric vehicle in 2012, fuel cell in 2015

[Anto]

Link

"Bob Carter, group vice president and general manager of the Toyota brand, came to Detroit on Monday to have lunch with some local media. Among the topics of discussion at the gathering were Toyota's plans for zero emissions vehicles..."

[G35X]

The oft-rumored Prius wagon is definitely a go… to be available late next year, according to the Yomiuri daily today. The news article said it would come with a smaller yet more powerful Li-ion battery pack instead of NiMH for more room and better performance. The price is reported to be in the 20K’s.

[omnimoeish]

Originally Posted by G35X

The oft-rumored Prius wagon is definitely a go… to be available late next year, according to the Yomiuri daily today. The news article said it would come with a smaller yet more powerful Li-ion battery pack instead of NiMH for more room and better performance. The price is reported to be in the 20K’s.

That's extremely surprising. Not that they are expanding the Prius body style offerings, but they are going to be using Li-ion? A lot of risk for not a lot of gain. The NiMH batteries they've been using are easily lasting 10 years with virtually no failures and they are risking the longevity reputation of their cars to gain maybe a cubic foot of room when they already have the biggest cargo room of any midsize car (that I can tell after doing quite a search anyway) and they are making it a wagon to boot now? Now much room do they need? I'm sure they know what they are doing, but it's just surprising. They are doing this for two possible reasons. They don't want the negative publicity of the dirty Nickel they currently use, or they are just trying to get away from it so that they and their parts suppliers can focus on Li-ion because somehow it just simplifies things, or brings down prices if they use Li-ion in the non plug-in version and then they just give the PHEV version a slightly bigger battery, tweak the software and add a plug.

[G35X]

“ …or they are just trying to get away from it so that they and their parts suppliers can focus on Li-ion because somehow it just simplifies things, or brings down prices if they use Li-ion in the non plug-in version and then they just give the PHEV version a slightly bigger battery, tweak the software and add a plug… “ – omnimoeish

I think so, too. Toyota is a very conservative company. Looks like Toyota is going to try Li-ion first with this new wagon without plug-in feature, production quantity of which should be much smaller than the hatchback Prius. Probably at around the same time they will release a limited number of the plug-in/Li-ion version Prius to test the market. After the test marketing, I think they will make the regular production version by increasing the capacity of the battery and the power of the drive motor to improve EV performance and range.

BTW, Panasonic finally obtained clearance from the anti-trust authorities of the Chinese and other governments for acquiring Sanyo. Take over bit has just started. Combined, their worldwide market share of Li-ion cells is about 40%. This should accelerate Toyota’s Li-ion program.

[G35X]

Sorry, I was wrong… Toyota will start selling a limited number of the plug-in version of the Prius next month mostly to institutional users. Capacity of the Li-ion pack is said to be 4~5kWh for 20km EV range (12.5 miles). Charging time is 3 hours at 100 volt supply and 100 minutes at 200 volt supply. Its fuel economy is reported to be 55km/litre (130 miles/gallon). I do not know how Toyota arrived at this number.