Affordable electric car to 'hit streets in 2012'  

Posted by Big Gav in ,

The SMH has an article on a new electric car from Toyota - Affordable electric car to 'hit streets in 2012'.

An electric car costing only $25,000 could be on sale in Australia within three years. The Japanese car maker used the 2009 Detroit motor show to unveil the FT-EV, a concept car that previews a new battery-electric "urban commuter" vehicle set to go on sale globally in 2012.

US media is reporting the diminutive FT-EV could wear an affordable price tag of about US$20,000 (about $25,000). The FT-EV will see Toyota join the growing number of manufacturers who in the early years of the next decade will offer vehicles that run on electricity.

The FT-EV is based on Toyota's iQ micro-car that landed in European and Japanese showrooms in 2008, though swaps that car's 1.0-litre petrol engine for a 45kW electric motor powered by a lithium-ion battery pack. Toyota says the three-metre-long, four-seater FT-EV has a cruising range of 80km and a targeted top speed of 112km/h. It takes between 2.5 and 7.5 hours to recharge the FT-EV, depending on the voltage of the power supply.

The company says the FT-EV will broaden its range of alternative-fuel vehicles as the world faces dwindling oil supplies, and will be aimed at city residents who would use the battery-electric car to commute between home and work, or to drive to other forms of public transport such as railway stations.

"Last year's spike in the price of petrol was no anomaly," says Toyota Motor Sales group vice president, environmental and public affairs, Irv Miller. "It was a brief glimpse of our future. We must address the inevitability of peak oil [when the world's oil supply starts a permanent decline] by developing vehicles powered by alternatives to liquid-oil fuel, as well as new concepts, like the iQ, that are lighter in weight and smaller in size. This kind of vehicle, electrified or not, is where our industry must focus its creativity."

Toyota says its petrol-electric hybrid vehicles - such as the third-generation Prius also revealed at the 2009 Detroit motor show - will continue to be at the centre of the company's long-term sustainable motoring program.

The company will introduce 10 new petrol-electric hybrid models by the early 2010s in various markets as it targets one-million hybrid sales per year.

3 comments

GAV,

I truly see this emerging to be a 'fact' based on the commitments and advancements by Toyota and Mitsubishi.

In reality our grid (although we know it has the night potential) will not be ready for this market.

However, I see the utilization of CHP units that utilize bio/seam gas and waste solid mass to generate the lack of grid stability and help with the evolution of the grid into a smart one.

The key to controlling the massive energy losses in AU and US is to have community based clean energy distribution that focuses on the resources of that region.

This utilization of 'decentralized energy' would clearly help make 'Affordable electric car' a reality.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klooRS-Jjyo


Oh yeah, it would also save 100's of infrastructure, grid, loss, waste emissions, skewed tax, regulatory, based load, resource and trillions wasted on subsidizing finite fossil fuels...


Not a silver bullet, but a good start in countries with AU & US traits.


I based my $10 Million google idea http://gcommunities.org on converting U.S. Sprawl and rural communities into self sufficient off grid communities (sorry about the dumb video - they only gave 30 secs). I documented existing community models that could not only sustain their own resource and energy needs but a financial model that would offer EROI of less than 5 years. Then these 'gCommunities' would 'sell off' excess and unused energy load to dense Urban, manufacturing and non-sustainable communities.

With tax credits centralized around passive homes and manufacturing use of co-generation of waste heat systems (largest consumer of energy and generation of GHG).

I also stated that 100% of the project funding would go directly to the project with the intention that it would return over 150% of the investment over the first 5 years. gCommunities would then reinvest the revenue into building national gCommunities through energy cooperative agreements.

As always the data was an inarguable, sustainable, economically profitable and a bureaucratically favorable plan using existing ideas and resources balanced to remove us from our dependence on finite resources while protecting out greatest resources - 'people and the planet'

i.e. it will be ignored or shelved for a more 'radical' cutting edge idea based on hydrogen powered unicorns.


Sorry for the rant... to early with no coffee.

Anonymous   says 3:20 AM

Check out my blog for the International Energy Agency's current outlook on energy prices going forward:

http://changealley.blogspot.com/

...

No worries Chris - I always enjoy a good rant !

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