Toyota: Lithium hybrids coming in 2010
Ready for fleet sales in 2010Toyota will start producing lithium-ion battery packs next year, achieving full scale production by 2010, according to Reuters. In that year, Toyota will begin selling plug-in hybrid vehicles, at least for fleet customers. Nonetheless, Toyota will continue to use NiMH batteries, even as lithium is developed.
"We plan to use both nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries, choosing the appropriate option depending on the vehicle," President Katsuaki Watanabe told a news conference to outline Toyota's environmental activities.
Additionally, Toyota also claimed that it is already working on a battery better than lithium.
Labels: Hybrid Vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles
posted by Dahcredyns at
7:08 AM
3 Comments:
By 2010, Toyota will be able to produce enough NiMH batteries to make more than a million hybrid vehicles per year, AND they will have a growing supply of lithium batteries.
Other automakers seem to be betting their hybrid future on lithium. While this is understandable, Toyota will still be a 1,000,000 hybrid vehicles per year ahead?
Does anyone have any idea what the significance of the year 2010 is? Seems like everyone is choosing that timeframe to roll out their products.
Fortunately, for me, I am going to need a new car then! :)
Really, i think its fear. I think automakers could be aggressive with lithium today if they really wanted, but they fear the possibility of a car, like a laptop, spontaneously exploding. Just one such 'accident' could temporarily kill lithium - costing automakers billions.
Automakers have perfected one thing more than anything else in recent decades - bean-counting, and I'd argue that bean-counting confirms the belief that there is no reason to rush into lithium at this point in time.
Since GM kind of put a line in the sand, a 2010 launch of the Volt, other automakers are simply respecting that line because it gives them time. Worse, I'd bet it will be late 2010 when lithium finally starts hitting the market, so we might really be talking about 2011.
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