Toyota speeding up plans for plugin prius
“Toyota’s President Katsuaki Watanabe revealed that the Japanese automaker is planning to develop a small electric car for sale early in the next decade. Thus the competition between General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. to produce a rechargeable car is to be updated. Therefore Toyota will speed up delivery of its plug-in hybrid from 2010 to the end of 2009, while the Chevy Volt is due in showrooms in late 2010.
Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said Toyota’s plug-in hybrid has a much shorter electric range than the Chevrolet Volt and must use gasoline to continue working.
The latter carries its own gasoline engine so that it can recharge the batteries when they are over.
Toyota Prius will travel about 40 miles in city traffic for about 80 cents worth of electricity. It will cost just 4 dollars a week.
The Tallahassee owner Fran Sullivan-Fahs was the one behind the design of this car.”
Source: efluxmedia
Toyota and Honda dominated the list of the top vehicle models with the highest fuel economy ratings released by the U.S. Motor Car
I wonder why toyota thinks that a plugin prius will compete with the Volt. They’re not even close to the same platform.
I’ve been wondering if the prius gets 48 and the Volt gets 50 (after the batteries are dead) why get a Volt at all? The prius is tested and you know it’ll work (plus if they make a plugin version it’ll get the first few miles for free too), the volt is a whole new technology. Unless the Volt is significantly bigger than the prius I can’t see getting a volt over a prius.