Toyota to make plug-in hybrid by 2010
Toyota Motor plans to produce lithium ion batteries next year for a plug-in hybrid vehicle available in 2010.
The company on Wednesday said that the plug-in hybrid will be "geared toward fleet customers in Japan, (the) United States, and Europe."
A joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic EV Energy plans to begin production of lithium ion batteries next year and move to full-scale production in 2010. Using the battery, Toyota plans to introduce a small electric vehicle for mass production.
Toyota's Prius, numbering a million sold, uses a nickel metal hydride battery. Lithium ion batteries, which are heavily used in consumer electronics, are being built into an upcoming generation of hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid cars.
Later in the month, Toyota plans to establish a research-and-development center for next-generation batteries that outperform lithiom ion batteries.
The company, which also continues to invest in fuel cell vehicles, recently began a lease program in Japan.
Toyota disclosed on Wednesday its plug-in hybrid production plans at a company-sponsored environmental forum in Tokyo, where it outlined its greenhouse gas reduction and clean-technology plans.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
Oh jimmyhoops, your little fugue on all-electric automobiles neglects the mfg'ing, industrial, shipping, trucking components of the equation. Automobiles are such a small percentage of the over-all demand, jimmyhoops. Hopefully your detachment from reality is only momentary rather than 'wholesale'.
Autos use half of US petroleum. Trucks use another quarter. So cars and trucks use about 3/4 of the oil. Jet fuel is about 10% (maybe jets could partially be replaced by high speed rail links which are much more efficient). If electricity were made more abundant, many fuel oil usages could be reduced. Dad uses off peak electric to heat his rural house (and nobody here works for a power company). The real issue here is our competitiveness US vs Euro. We will be reduced to 3rd world status if we don't change due to our longer distances. The interstate highway system and airport system is a giant subsidy of inefficiency in the US.
And the United States based automakers are doing how much with hybrid technology? I think I keep forgetting because it's VIRTUALLY NOTHING.
Good for Toyota. They are producing something people want, and will make a bundle.
On top of the stupid decisions regarding Fuel Consumption, they also continuously boggle the mind with poor design.
Take Ford for instance. The cars that stand out in my mind - The Contour, Taurus, Sable. These cars will go down in history as some of the ugliest cars ever made. Year after year these cars went through horrible design iterations, with each missing the mark in some way shape or form.
How about Chrysler? My favourite car from this years lineup would have to be the 300, and it's a friggin boat. Outside of the 300, (and the Viper => $100,000) there is not a single car that I would consider buying based on aesthetics. There are 33 different vehicles between Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep. Wanna take a guess at how many of them are fuel economical? What, maybe the Sebring? The majority of the lineup is, you guessed it - SUVs, minivans, and trucks.
And last, but not least, General Motors. They're still building the friggin Grand Prix! Come on guys, you have to be kidding me!? And still to this day, I see millions of Pontiac Sunbirds on the road. The sunbird gets my vote as the ugliest car ever made.
Even as a kid, what always boggled my mind was, why these horrible designs? Why must an affordable car look so awful? A nice looking car costs the same to build as an ugly one. And yet, year after year, there were all these iterations of horrible designs. It was as though they purposely made affordable cars ugly to make their 'high end' cars look good (I think I may have just answered my own question). The trouble is, bad design leaves a bad aftertaste. Once I see that a manufacturer has no pride (or taste), I have a hard time seeing them in any other way.
http://electronrun.com/
1- You plug it in, where is the power coming from? A polluting power plant?
2- I have heard horror stories about cell phone and laptop batteries over heating, catching fire, and blowing up. Now imagine that on a grand scale (an electric car).
- by jsparrow_28 June 16, 2009 2:58 AM PDT
- It seems that the plugin hybrid concept has been hijacked by the "climate change" banner. This is a spin! Plug in hybrids may do one thing, they may decrease dependency on oil. But whether the technology is desired to combat "climate change" is an association at best. I don't believe global warming is caused by humans but I want a plug in hybrid. So why should I have to listen to people arguing about "climate change". I would be more convinced to listen to arguements about oil/dollar hegemony and a collapsing dollar if the world switches out of oil for the automotive industry.
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