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Toyota's iQ-based electric car, due to be launched in 2010, will get its own body style to create a stand-alone model which will become Toyota’s first all-electric car.

Internally called the BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle), the new car will not occupy the same market sector as the iQ and will “get its own bodywork”, according to the iQ’s chief engineer, Hiroki Nakajima. “We wanted to position the iQ as premium,” he said, “but not so the BEV.”

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 93mile range.. i'm getting more sure that all battery is defintately not the future of cars. my lupo has a 200mile range, i can double that to 400miles just by carrying £30 of petrol in jerry can inside the boot. doubling a range of a battery car would cost about £5k in batteries, and you would have to tow them in a trailer...

 

200 miles - pah, I get 500 miles a tank out of my C1!  I was thinking the opposite about this car though - 93 miles is a useful range that could meet my daily needs (I often drive over 50 miles a day, going to, from and around work).  Long journeys for the moment are always going to be the domain of an internal combustion engine, but this gets beyond the very limiting 40 or 50 mile ranges that many electric cars seem to have.

Casanova:

93 miles is a useful range

I'd agree. Not many people do more than 45 miles each way to work so this would suit well for a commuting car. So long as the price is lower than the petrol iQ it should sell well. It seems that Toyota have finally realised that the petrol iQ needs a premium interior to match its premium price, they should have done this from the start along with the custom-able options as per MINI and 500; 2011 may be too late.

I really think you guys are missing the point here.  The battery-powered iQ is not intended to compete with efficient petrol or diesel cars.

What the battery iQ is meant for is a second car so that we can trundle to work or to the supermarket is a fairly environmentally friendly way and we can  also have our high-octane fun at weekends or on holidays.

 I would certainly have an electric car for the boring stuff and a BMW M3 for "my time"! ;-)))

 Wow, more ignorant journalism. Toyota's first electric car debuted more than 10 years ago and it is still on the road! The RAV4 EV.....

 

Casanova:

200 miles - pah, I get 500 miles a tank out of my C1!

yes but i have more than double the horsepower in mine, and its a 10 year old engine type.

my point is that we will never have battery cars taking over from petrol, apart from city cars, and they will be too expensive anyway for the average public, unless the tax payer subsidises them.

 

 

Jabroni:

 Wow, more ignorant journalism. Toyota's first electric car debuted more than 10 years ago and it is still on the road! The RAV4 EV.....

I thought Toyota had taken them all back and crushed them at the end of their lease?

Lee23404:

I thought Toyota had taken them all back and crushed them at the end of their lease?

Toyota made about 1500 of the RAV4 EVs. They crushed about 600-700 before activists stopped them. Toyota was also the only OEM to actually sell some EVs. They made exactly 328 available for sale and all were quickly snapped up. I've been driving one of these for almost 7 years. It has an easy 100 mile range, but I can get 120 in a pinch. It's been trouble free, needing only new tires, and just recently, new shocks. I've got over 72,000 miles on it and it still runs like it was brand news. The comment that EVs will be your second vehicle is not quite true. For us, and all the others we know with EVs, this is your number one car. Since we rarely travel more than 100 miles in a day, our gas car is the one we only drive when going on long trips. Given that well over 90% of daily driving is under 100 miles, these vehicles will easily displace a significant percent of petrol. By the way, all of our driving has been on kWh we generated from the sunlight falling on our solar PV system. Like many EV owners, we discovered that solar energy and EVs are a good combo. Our electric bill for the whole year is about $100, and that's for the house and car! We haven't been to a gas station since December 2002. We drive on sunshine instead.

Paul Scott:

By the way, all of our driving has been on kWh we generated from the sunlight falling on our solar PV system. Like many EV owners, we discovered that solar energy and EVs are a good combo.

 

Sounds good but I'm guessing that you live somewhere nice and sunny like California? Try that here (I'm currently looking at the rain running down the windows) and you'd be lucky to charge up a toy car :0

EV's strike me as a good idea for most people with my only concern being cost. Maybe a cheap lease deal rather than purchase may be the way forward.

An EV as the main car with a nice V8 for the weekends sounds good to me.

 You will be surprised how successful photovoltaic solar panels are in generating electricity in the British Isles.  I suggest you check the roof of the court buliding in Glasgow:

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Court39s-m-solar-power-system.4214394.jp

With that array, the court defers a substantial portion of its electricity bill for that building.

 Paul M. Rybski