We'll go electric by 2010 - Toyota's promise - ResearchInChina

Date:2008-01-15liaoyan  Text Size:

TOYOTA Motor Corp, the world's biggest maker of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, plans to release cars whose batteries can recharge from normal electrical sockets by 2010, matching General Motors Corp's target for introducing the fuel-efficient vehicles.

The company will provide a significant number of plug-in hybrids to global fleet customers, with a large percentage coming to the US, President Katsuaki Watanabe said at the Detroit auto show, without elaborating. The cars will help Toyota meet new US fuel-economy rules early, he said.

"We will put the full force of our resources" into efforts to develop vehicles that increase fuel economy and reduce carbon emissions, Watanabe said.

Toyota, initially hesitant to embrace plug-ins, is now racing GM and other auto makers to develop the technology. The Japanese company leads in sales of current hybrids, which cannot recharge at outlets. GM has said it may start selling its Volt plug-in hybrid car with lithium-ion batteries as early as 2010.

GM is "right in that race," Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner, 54, told Bloomberg News in a January 8 interview in Las Vegas, where the Detroit-based car maker showed a futuristic Cadillac sport-utility vehicle powered by hydrogen and lithium-ion batteries. GM and Toyota also are competing for the title of world's largest car maker, a ranking the US car maker has held for 76 years and may have lost to the Japanese company in 2007.

The planned new plug-in hybrids would use lithium-ion batteries. Last year, Toyota officials had said that lithium batteries for plug-ins were not ready for consumer use and could not gauge market demand.

"The advanced lithium-ion batteries that the Volt would use, batteries suitable for the long-term rigors of everyday automotive use, don't exist," Irv Miller, Toyota's US vice president for corporate communications, wrote on a company Website in September.

Watanabe, 65, also said that to help boost the total fuel economy of Toyota vehicles in the US, the car maker plans low exhaust diesel engines for large Tundra pickups and Sequoia sports utility vehicles in the "near future."

US President George W. Bush in December signed into law a program mandating a 40-percent increase in car and light-truck fuel economy by 2020, when new models will need to average 14.8 kilometers per liter.

"As always, we will not wait until the deadline to comply," Watanabe told reporters at a reception. "I have issued a challenge to our engineers to meet the standard well in advance of 2020."

The US Environmental Protection Agency ranks Toyota and Honda Motor Co as having the most fuel-efficient fleets of cars and light trucks among major auto makers.


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