Toyota Says Electric RAV4 Will Be Shown in November
Takeshi Uchiyamada, vice president of Toyota Motor Corp.
Nelson Ching/Bloomberg
Takeshi Uchiyamada, vice president of Toyota Motor Corp.
Takeshi Uchiyamada, vice president of Toyota Motor Corp. Photographer: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg
Toyota Motor Corp. plans to sell about 20,000 plug-in Prius hybrids in the U.S. and will show a battery-powered sport-utility vehicle at the Los Angeles auto show in November to meet demand for autos powered by electricity.
A rechargeable Prius should be available by June 2012, and the all-electric RAV4 compact SUV will be marketed in the U.S. the same year, Toyota Executive Vice President Takeshi Uchiyamada told reporters yesterday in Detroit. The RAV4 is being developed with Palo Alto, California-based affiliate Tesla Motors Inc., which will supply the batteries and motor, he said.
Carmakers including Toyota, the world’s largest, are under pressure from governments, environmental groups and consumers to sell models that consume little or no petroleum and emit fewer gases linked to global warming. The project with Tesla is separate from a previously announced, two-passenger electric car the Toyota City, Japan-based company plans to sell by 2012.
“The RAV4 will be the only electric compact SUV in the market,” said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends for Santa Monica, California-based Truecar.com. “The biggest issue will be pricing. If they can keep the vehicle priced $4,000 from its gasoline counterpart, even after tax credits, the vehicle will sell.”
Plug-In Prius
Introducing electric vehicles developed by both Tesla and Toyota by 2012 will ensure that the Japanese automaker has models to meet new U.S. requirements and offer customers a variety of options, Uchiyamada said.
Toyota can be “slow” to innovate, and the partnership with Tesla allows the Japanese company to work “in a much quicker way,” he said.
Toyota, the world’s largest seller of hybrid-electric cars, led by the Prius, also plans to add six hybrid models by the end of 2012, Uchiyamada said.
A plug-in Prius that lets drivers travel solely on electricity for about 13 miles may cost $3,000 to $5,000 more than a conventional version, said John Hanson, a Toyota spokesman.
Global sales of the plug-in will be a “few tens of thousands” for the first few years, or less than 10 percent of regular Prius sales, Uchiyamada said. He reiterated that Toyota will sell a retail model of its hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle to U.S. drivers by 2015.
Toyota fell 1.7 percent to close at 2,899 yen in Tokyo trading. The stock has declined 25 percent in 2010.
Data Reader Flaw
Toyota, which in the past year recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide for problems related to unintended acceleration, also discovered and fixed a flaw in electronic data readers the company uses to determine vehicle conditions prior to an accident.
The error could cause the data reader to show a higher speed than was actually experienced by the vehicle, Uchiyamada said. In one case, a vehicle was incorrectly recorded as traveling as fast as 170 miles an hour, he said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is still reviewing problems with Toyota vehicles, was notified of the error, Uchiyamada said. It didn’t affect the U.S. government’s safety investigations, he said.
Kia Motors Corp., South Korea’s second-biggest carmaker, said today it will make 2,000 electric vehicles by the end of 2012 as part of plan by affiliate Hyundai Motor Co. to make 2,500 battery-powered vehicles during the same time period.
Hyundai will make 500 units of its BlueOn car, while Kia plans to sell a small electric SUV, Hong John Hee, director at Hyundai Motor Group’s research and development division, said today in Namyang, South Korea. Hyundai said last week it would make 2,500 units of the BlueOn.
Hyundai Motor Group, which includes Hyundai and Kia, aims to begin retail sales of electric cars from 2013, it said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan, at Jgreen16@bloomberg.net; Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page