Toyota FT-EV

In January 2009, Toyota revealed a concept electric car called the FT-EV, based on its recently launched iQ minicar.

It’s a four seater hatchback, bigger than a Smart city car, and looks what it is – a concept car that will prepare potential buyers for the real model, timed for production in Japan in 2012. It has a range of around 50 miles and can be charged from flat in around seven hours, so no real surprises there. And Toyota has not told us much more than that.

Toyota defines role of electric cars

Toyota has, however, confirmed decisively that it sees the future mass market in terms of petrol-electric hybrids (including plug-ins), rather than pure electrics. (October 2009). The only roles it foresees for electric cars is as small city cars and as commercial vehicles. Both suit daily driving routines that are predictable and limited in their range.

No short term breakthrough in electric car battery technology

Toyota doesn’t see any short-term break-throughs in battery technology – certainly not on the scale necessary to power volume-manufactured family-sized cars, and the obstacles to reducing the size and weight of today’s lithium-ion batteries appear insurmountable.

The company is similarly doubtful about the massive financial investment necessary to create a viable infrastructure. Quick charging points, they say, will cost in the region of £30,000 each and no-one as yet come up with an answer to the questions as to how to you provide sufficient charging points to service people who have to park in the street or who live in blocks of high-rise flats.

Toyota’s electric and hybrid car strategy

The company has gone on record as saying that ‘the conventional petrol-hybrid, like the all-new third-generation Prius, is considered Toyota’s long-term core powertrain technology.’

Nevertheless, Toyota is progressing with its small, all-electric car where it sees a future for a short-range city runaround. In October 2009, it showed an updated FT concept, the FT-EV 2, at the Tokyo Motor Show - a sub-iQ, low-powered city car that Toyota believes has a distinct role to play amongst a range of different solutions determined by consumer choice. The company foresees consumer demand for an electric city runabout, but not for a family-sized electric car at the price levels and inconvenience that come with it.