Toyota Kills Tiny Two-Seat Electric Car It Doesn't Believe In

We've been subjected to a spate of dire headlines today covering Toyota's statement that it's killing plans for its eQ two-seat urban electric-car program.

Reuters reported, "Toyota drops plans for widespread sales of electric car," which is at least an accurate headline.

Some seem to take a "sky is falling" tone, which we don't feel is the case.

Most of the stories focus on Toyota management's view that battery technology isn't ready, the market for pure electrics isn't there, and hybrids are a much better bet.

Those are all debatable points, but as Reuters gently points out, Toyota has always "taken a more conservative view of the market for battery-powered cars" than Nissan, General Motors, and other companies.

Another way of saying that might be to note that Toyota bet the company's future technology direction on parallel hybrids almost 20 years ago, and has reaped the benefits of what was likely a very expensive R&D program.

Toyota has sold well over half of all the hybrids on the planet, and its 50-mpg Prius Liftback is the most fuel-efficient gasoline car sold in the U.S. market that doesn't have a plug.

But as any auto journalist will confirm, Toyota executives and engineers relentlessly argue that parallel hybrids are the best way to meet the broad array of consumer needs.

They also frequently contend that plugging into the grid often isn't as ecologically sounds as it seems. (That's a whole different article we won't get into here.)

Toyota has worked on its own electric-car batteries for quite some time, but it hasn't had very good luck thus far.

The company admitted in 2010 that it had bet on the wrong lithium-ion cell chemistry, ending up turning to an outside cell supplier for the lithium-ion battery pack of its 2012 Prius Plug-In Hybrid.

And its first and only battery-electric vehicle was to be the eQ, an electric version of the tiny Scion iQtwo-seat urban car. The company showed several prototypes of the car as the FT-EV and FT-EV II in 2009, and FT-EV III last year.

A two-seater with a projected range of no more than 50 or 60 miles: Does that sound like a winning electric-car strategy to you?

Toyota is left with just one all-electric car, the 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV, whose powertrain is entirely designed by Tesla Motors.

2011 Toyota FT-EV III Concept

That was quite an impressive car to drive, but it's strictly a "compliance car" to let the company meet zero-emission vehicle requirements imposed by the powerful California Air Resources Board.

So now Toyota will sell just 2,600 RAV4 EVs over three years, and only 100 eQs.

Not the sign of a company that believes in battery electric vehicles, for sure.

But Toyota has never believed in battery-electric vehicles, and it's been unable to develop one--unlike Nissan, General Motors, Ford, and others.

The sales of plug-in cars, while likely to double this year, have undoubtedly been slower than the most optimistic projections.

But frankly, Toyota canceling its battery-electric car program is roughly akin to General Motors deciding not to offer a plug-in Two-Mode Hybrid system in the Cadillac SRX because it didn't perform well enough.

Few people knew either car was coming, and not a lot of people would have cared if it did.

We think the eQ wouldn't have been an appealing car in the U.S., even to electric-car fans. In that light, we think Toyota made a smart decision.

It's just not the end of the world we seem to be reading about.

Source: Green Car Reports

Five Hybrid Concept Vehicles Compared and Wanted

Every now and then, we allow our thoughts to drift here at GreenCarReports.

Naturally, we're thinking forward rather than back, and often to the cars we might be driving around in five or ten years time.

We've compiled a list of five concept cars seen at auto shows over the last year or so. All are hybrids, and all showcase exciting new visions of styling and technology that could well hit the roads in the near future.

Hyundai i-Oniq

Given the meteoric rise of Korean brands Hyundai and Kia over the last few decades, it's only right that they should play a part in our future too. The i-Oniq concept car, revealed at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show back in March, is a sleek, two-door range-extended hybrid.

 Though the styling evokes images of a huge engine under the hood, the concept uses a tiny 1.0-liter 3-cylinder unit, supplying power to a 107-horsepower electric motor when its 75-mile battery range is depleted. We're pretty confident that 75 miles would cover most of our day-to-day driving, but that little gasoline engine would provide a useful extra 360 miles.

And you know what? It looks pretty good too.

BMW i8

Increasingly the makers of the Ultimate Driving Machine are turning their attention to EfficientDynamics. High-mpg diesel engines are common in BMW's European lineup and increasingly filtering into the U.S, and the 1 Series-based ActiveE is a great little electric car.

It's the i8 that really excites us though. The plug-in hybrid i8 should reach 60mph in under 6 seconds and go on to 155mph, and the combination of three-cylinder gasoline engine and electric motors should make it the greenest BMW yet--save for the pure electric ActiveE and upcoming i3, of course.

Toyota FT-Bh

Shown at Geneva this year, the FT-Bh concept is Toyota's indication of what a future version of the 2012 Toyota Prius C or Yaris Hybrid might look like--and what its engineering might be under the skin.

For the FT-Bh, that means a 1.0-liter, twin-cylinder Atkinson cycle engine--think of it as half that of a Prius engine. It's unlikely the car would be too powerful, but with a curb weight of only 1,733 pounds it doesn't have a lot to haul either. Coupled with a drag coefficient of only 0.235, economy could be spectacular. Toyota is claiming up to 112 mpg for the concept, and that's before the car becomes a plug-in hybrid...

Acura NSX

The best news about the NSX is that Acura and Honda are actually going to make it--so in a few more years we could be driving this one for real. It'll use a mid-mounted V-6 engine supplying power to the rear wheels, and the front wheels will be powered by electric motors, as part of Acura's 'Super Hybrid All-Wheel Drive' system.

Acura wants to make an environmentally-responsible supercar, but it's sure to offer all the driving fun of the original NSX, still considered one of the first truly usable supercars. With its own small-capacity V-6, it was already ahead of the game as far as downsizing is concerned.

Infiniti Emerg-E

Like the Acura NSX, the Emerg-E really could hit the streets in its current form. Based on the same platform as the small-volume Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid, the chassis is light and the technology is high.

The Emerg-E uses a Lotus-designed 1.2-liter, 3-cylinder, 50-horsepower engine, but the real power comes from two electric motors producing a combined 402 horsepower and 738 pounds-feet of torque. Electric-only range would be around 30 miles, and the range-extending engine sips juice for another 270 miles.

So those are just five concepts we can't wait to drive, and that's without scratching the surface of electric cars too. What concept cars would you like to see on the roads? Let us know below.



Source: Green Car Reports