Toyota winds back electric plans, ramps up hybrid assault

Toyota has confirmed its mid-term commitment to hybrid over electric power, announcing plans to shelve an electric city car and double hybrid sales this year.

Reuters reports the Japanese giant has iced plans to roll out a production version of the eQ – an electric vehicle (EV) based on the iQ city car – as it believes the market is not yet willing to embrace battery-only power.

The announcement is a blow to the target set by the Obama administration in the US, of having one million EVs on the road there by 2015 – a figure many pundits had already pronounced beyond reach.

Toyota’s head of vehicle development Takeshi Uchiyamada, regarded by many as the architect of the hugely successful Prius hybrid program, confirmed at a press conference in Tokyo yesterday, that “there are many difficulties” with the eQ program.

The tiny electrically powered city car was to have been capable of travelling up to 100km on a single charge, at speeds up to 125km/h, for a cost of around $45,000.

“The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society’s needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge,” Mr Uchiyamada said.

The eQ, which first appeared in prototype form in 2010, will remain available in limited numbers to local governments and some corporates in Japan and the US. However, Toyota has scaled back early sales projections from thousands of vehicles to about 100.

Despite effectively dropping the eQ, Toyota plans on proceeding with the launch of its RAV4 EV in the US, partly on the strength of its drivetrain, which has been developed by US EV specialist, Tesla. But sales projections for the RAV4 EV remain at a cautious 2600 units over three years.

Toyota will also continue working on developing a new wireless battery charging technology for EVs, but appears to set to direct most of its green efforts into boosting hybrid sales.

Projected global sales of 1.2 million Toyota hybrids in 2012 are nearly double the 620,000 units sold in 2011 and the company has its sights set on a million or more hybrid sales per year between now and 2015. That figure is given credence by the planned roll out of no less than 21 new hybrids during that time, 14 of which will be all-new models.

“Sales of hybrids are growing globally, including in emerging markets,” Mr Uchiyamada said.“The proportion of hybrid cars should also gradually increase at other companies.”

Against this backdrop, the company has been underwhelmed by the initial response to its first plug-in hybrid (PHEV), with just 8400 Prius Plug-ins sold in Japan this year – well short of the 35-40,000 sales initially forecast.

The Prius plug-in is essentially a conventional Prius with a more potent lithium-ion battery that boosts its electric-drive range from a couple of kilometres to about 20km.

Mr Uchiyamada attributed its poor sales to marketing shortcomings, rather than any problem with the technology.

“We believe that there is social demand for the plug-in hybrid, but our efforts to let the customers know what it is have not been enough,” he said.

In a glimpse of what lies beyond 2015, the company also used this week’s briefing to announce a new hydrogen fuel-cell powered bus, developed jointly with its heavy vehicles division Hino.

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