Toyota announces Sub-Prius hybrid

The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit was the venue for Toyota's unveiling of its downscale hybrid "concept", the smaller-than-Prius FT-CH.

56 centimetres shorter, yet only 2.5 centimetres narrower than the current Prius, the FT-CH is aimed at a younger, less affluent generation of buyers who feel compelled to take up the so-called environmental advantages of petrol-electric vehicles.

The FT-CH is engineered similarly to the Prius, using the company's in-house-developed nickel-metal hydride batteries. Toyota says its development of nickel-metal hydride batteries over three generations of Prius and a total of seven hybrids has "reduced size, weight and cost while improving energy density, quality and reliability."

However the company is also embracing more efficient lithium-ion technology with the plug-in hybrid Prius PHV currently in use in a global demonstration programme for selected world markets. Toyota maintains that lithium-ion still has some way to go before production costs come down to a workable level.

The FT-CH concept is expected to be part of a "family" strategy being developed for Prius in the US. "Obviously it will require additional models to qualify as a family," Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) USA Inc. president Jim Lentz said at the Detroit show.

The FT-CH was styled at the company's European design centre in Nice, France and is claimed to provide "maximum passenger comfort and interior roominess, with an imaginative sense of style."

It is lighter than the Prius, and therefore more fuel efficient.

Hybrids are expected to account for around one million Toyota sales in the early 2010s. The company says part of the plan is to introduce eight all-new hybrid models "over the next few years", stressing that none of these will be updates on existing models. "They will be all new dedicated hybrid vehicles, or all new hybrid versions of existing gas engine models," the company said in a press statement issued at the Detroit show.

Toyota says its joint venture partnership with Panasonic has been central to its roll-out of hybrid models. Panasonic EV Energy plans to have "three separate, fully operational production facilities with a combined capacity of more than one million units per year" by the end of 2010.

The company's hydrogen fuel cell FCHV is due to go into service in a three-year demonstration programme later this year as part of its cover-all-bases strategy, also embracing battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHVs).

Toyota says advanced battery R&D programs with nickel-metal, lithium-ion and "beyond lithium" are underway for a wide variety of applications in conventional hybrids, PHVs, BEVs and FCHVs.

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