Toyota cast doubt on the economic viability of electric vehicles this week when it announced it was curtailing plans for widespread sales of its first all-electric car.
Toyota had hoped to sell a few thousand EVs tentatively called the eQ, an all-electric version of the Scion iQ. Scion is the youth brand of Toyota. Now, Toyota says it will only offer about 100 editions of the car in the U.S. and Japan. Canada may not see any of the vehicles.
"Two years later, there are many difficulties," said Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's vicechairman in charge of vehicle development. "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."
He said Toyota will instead work on improving its gasolineelectric hybrid technology, an area it has dominated since introducing the Prius in 1997. Uchiyamada, an engineer, spearheaded Toyota's initial development of the Prius.
Toyota expects to offer 21 gas-electric hybrids in its lineup by 2015. Of that number, 14 will be all-new.
The announcement comes only days after Toyota introduced an EV version of the Toyota RAV4 for the U.S. market. That vehicle was jointly produced with Tesla Motors.
Plans are still on track to offer a plug-in hybrid version of the Prius this fall. Unlike a pure EV, this model has a range of only 20 kilometres, but can revert back to gasoline-electric operation when the battery is depleted.
"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.
Toyota's announcement comes at the same time Tesla Motors, makers of electric cars and components, cut its revenue forecast for 2012 because of delays in rolling out its muchanticipated Model S luxury sedan. The demand for the allelectric car is still high, with the company reporting it has 13,000 reservations on its books for the $57,000 US four-door sedan.
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