To most of us, Toyota’s snazzy Prius hybrid still seems like the cutting edge of cool, the latest and greatest technolog in cars. But nine years after the Prius was introduced in the United States, some are calling it obsolete. “The hybrid is yesterday’s technology,” says San Francisco Mayor and recently announced California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom. To be sure, Newsom has a political ax to grind—he’s trying to lure electric-car makers to the Bay Area, which already is home to Tesla Motors, maker of a sexy electric roadster, and Better Place, another startup focused on greentech transportation. But Newsom has a point. A new generation of carmakers is shunning the traditional hybrid format in favor of pure electric powertrains (driven completely by batteries) or “plug-in hybrids.” Indeed, the auto industry is being disrupted by rapid waves of new technology, a phenomenon that feels normal for the folks in Silicon Valley but is perhaps unfamiliar for the folks in Detroit. “We are on the cusp of a period of technical innovation like the automobile industry has never seen,” says Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, the largest U.S. auto retailer. “There will be more change in the next five to 10 years than there was in the last 100.”

The first victim of that rapid change may be the Prius-style hybrid. “The traditional hybrid is an in-between solution as we make the transition from gas engines to plug-in hybrids,” says Henrik Fisker, founder and CEO of Fisker Automotive, an Irvine, Calif.-based company whose new $87,500 sports sedan, called the Karma, uses a plug-in hybrid powertrain. Fisker, a legendary automotive designer who worked at BMW and Ford before striking out on his own, says the Prius-style hybrid is “very complicated” and “doesn’t make sense.” While the Prius delivers 46 miles per gallon, Fisker says the average owner of a Karma will get 100 miles per gallon—and those who rarely travel more than 50 miles at a time will do even better.

That’s because in a traditional hybrid, like the Prius, both the gas engine and the electric motor drive the wheels. In a plug-in hybrid, you have both an electric motor and a gas engine, but only the electric motor powers the wheels. The gas engine only generates electricity to recharge the battery pack. If you don’t travel beyond the range of the battery pack—about 50 miles—the gas engine never starts up, and you run in pure electric mode. In theory, some owners of plug-in hybrids might never use the gas engine at all.

Even the automakers in Detroit are jumping on the plug-in hybrid bandwagon, though they don’t use that name. The Chevrolet Volt (due out in 2011) uses a plug-in hybrid powertrain, but General Motors calls it an “extended-range electric vehicle.” Chrysler calls its forthcoming line of plug-in hybrids (due out in 2013) “range-extended electric vehicles.” Chrysler is also making pure electric cars, like its Dodge Circuit EV roadster, which has no gas engine and can travel only 150 miles before needing a recharge. One thing Chrysler hasn’t announced is a traditional hybrid like the Prius. Ford and GM both make Prius-style hybrids, but they represent a tiny percentage of overall sales.

Others are doing an even more radical rethinking of the automobile. Better Place, in Palo Alto, Calif., intends to operate networks of “switching stations” where owners of pure electric cars can swap out a low battery for one that’s fully charged. You’ll pay for the car the way you pay for a cell phone—some money upfront, and then a monthly subscription fee, based on how many miles you drive. Who knows if it will work? But it’s an example of the kind of innovation that outsiders and newcomers are bringing to the industry.

No surprise: Toyota gets a bit vexed when it hears auto-industry newbies bashing the Prius as outdated. “The fact that the Prius has been around for 10 years does not mean it is old news or obsolete. In fact, it keeps getting better and better,” says John Hanson, a company spokesman, adding that next year’s model will get 50 miles per gallon, up from 46mpg in the current model. The most outdated thing about a Prius is its nickel-metal hydride battery. The new pure electric and plug-in hybrid cars use lithium-ion batteries, which can store more energy. Hanson says Toyota is doing research on lithium-ion batteries, and plans a plug-in hybrid prototype for next year. But he insists that for now its tried-and-true batteries are best, and that lithium ion isn’t ready for prime time. “Battery science is not where it needs to be,” he says.

Prius sales in the U.S. are already slumping—they were down 56 percent in March, in part because of the lousy economy and also because of lower gas prices. Which raises the question of whether any of these new car technologies will succeed as long as gas remains cheap. Jackson, from AutoNation, says we should levy a steep fuel tax and pump the money we raise into new car technologies. That sounds like a great idea. But even hard-core greenies like Newsom don’t dare endorse it. “That requires someone to give up their political future,” he says. “There’s nobility in that. And I’m all for nobility. So I’m looking forward to someone else doing that.”

Which means one thing: like it or not, the dirty old internal-combustion engine probably will remain with us for a good long time.

Source (article): NEWSWEEK

Source (picture): CARGURUS

GENEVA - GM’s Adam Opel GmbH subsidiary presented the lithium-ion battery powered hatchback Ampera on Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show, where electric-powered vehicles emerged as one way to persuade environmentally aware consumers to buy new cars during the global recession.

Other automakers — including Chrysler, Mitsubishi and Ford — also touted their plans for cars equipped with electric motors as the industry both seeks to overcome the current crisis that has decimated sales and meet increasingly tough environmental and carbon emission standards.

Only European giant VW bucked the trend, saying its answer to the electric car would come out “in the coming decade.”

European drivers could be silently cruising around in the Ampera by the end of 2011 — up to 40 miles per plug-in, augmented by another 300 miles of extended range from a gasoline engine. The car is the European relative to GM’s Volt plug-in hybrid set to debut in the United States next year.

The Ampera presented in Geneva was a white four-door sedan with a hatchback — and a set of front headlights that created a menacing, masculine impression. An Opel official demonstrated how the car could easily be plugged into any household electrical supply.

“This is the kind of game-changing technology that the auto industry needs to respond to energy and environmental challenges,” President of GM Europe Carl Peter Forster said.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): GMVOLT.COM

Yes, this is what most of us think an electric car should look like. Small, eccentric, techno-geeky, Toyota’s FT-EV has got all the right electric cues, and most importantly it confirms a battery-electric future or Toyota, one that the company says will become a reality in 2012.

Certainly, Toyota has partial-electric vehicles in its fleet now, dubbed hybrids. The Prius is by far the hybrid leader, making up for more than fifty-percent of global hybrid sales, while Toyota and its premium Lexus brand make a bevy of hybrids that are the envy of autodom. But so far Toyota is being left behind in the all-important plug-in hybrid segment, by Saturn of all companies. Not to worry, though, as 500 plug-ins are scheduled to arrive in late ‘09, if only for global lease-fleet customers.

The FT-EV is important in that, along with the compressed natural gas powered Camry Hybrid concept shown at the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show in November, it signifies an expansion of green alternative powertrains for the hybrid brand.

“Now, more than ever, we cannot lose sight of our future,” said Stephen Beatty, Managing Director at Toyota Canada Inc. “Nowhere is this more important than with our industry’s duty and commitment to provide true sustainable mobility with vehicles that significantly reduce fuel consumption, our carbon footprint and overall greenhouse gases.”

If you recognize the FT-EV’s shape, it’s basically Toyota’s ultra-cool smart car fighting iQ (not available here yet) without the cool angular headlight clusters. Certainly, the new concept’s gold light bar is kind of cool in its own way, if you’re into that sort of thing, and it’s a clear differentiator between the gasoline-powered internal combustion production car and this electrified urban commuter. Either way, it would be as much of a hit as the little four-place iQ is in Japan, where it’s already on sale, just because it’s cute and ultimately thrifty.

The FT-EV’s target consumer is an urbanite who commutes about 80 km (50 miles) per day, and has somewhere (anywhere really) to plug it in for recharging. The market, while not as hungry for this type of vehicle as it would have been over the summer when gas prices spiked to record levels, has been prepared for the inevitable, when oil shoots back up to the nether regions of reality.

Whether that happens later this year or sometime in the distant future, oil appears to be a finite resource destined to deplete, and as its availability lessens the commodity markets will enjoy a nice ride up the board. Personally, I don’t think there’s a car buyer out in our current market who doesn’t factor fuel economy into their purchase, the wounds of such high prices not necessarily still festering, but scar tissue remaining as a constant reminder of how things could easily sway to the negative.

“Last summer’s dollar-thirty-a-litre gasoline was no anomaly. It was a brief glimpse of our future,” said Beatty. “We must address the inevitability of peak oil by developing vehicles powered by alternatives to liquid-oil fuel, as well as new concepts, like the iQ, that are lighter in weight and smaller in size. This kind of vehicle, electrified or not, is where our industry must focus its engineering and innovation.”

Toyota hasn’t given up much information about what’s inside its little FT-EV, but suffice it to say that the electric powertrain will be sustained by lithium-ion battery packs. The company owns 60-percent of Panasonic EV Energy Company, Ltd (PEVE) after all, a purchase that will help it reform its Prius from higher polluting nickel metal hydride batteries in coming years as well as power its upcoming fleet of plug-in hybrids (PHVs).

So get ready for a brand new future, and one that is going to happen whether you want muscle cars to rule the world or not. Let’s face it, the only three car companies with new versions of traditional muscle at the Detroit show are currently fighting for their lives, and Toyota, despite suffering through the worst year of the 71 it’s been in existence, remains on solid footings and fully capable of internally funding the world’s automotive future.

Of course, there are other car companies too, and therefore alternatives to Toyotas alternative powertrains will be forthcoming in the future like they’re already in our present, but companies the size of Toyota have the ability to create entire market segments, as it did with the Prius. Give Honda credit for its early attempt at an HEV, the somewhat sporty but totally useless Insight, and the others that have followed, but Toyota’s Prius is responsible for creating the functional dedicated hybrid segment, and a testament to the car’s brilliance is its rival’s all-new Insight, a car that comes so close to mirroring the current Prius that it’s emulation bordering on flattery.

The new FT-EV, however, is unique like the Prius, and without the ultra-kitsch gold exterior trim and decals-gone-wild visual statement would make a cute little runabout. Of course, outside of Toyota’s inner circle, who’s to say exactly what the proposed electric vehicle Toyota has in mind will look like when it comes down the pike in 2012, the launch date the automaker’s national alternative-fuel vehicle manager, Bill Reinert recently announced. All in know is if it comes between the FT-EV and an electrified iQ, I’ll take the latter.

Specifications (2009 FT-EV Concept):

Body Type: 2-door hatchback
Engine: electric motor
Battery: lithium-ion
Exterior Dimensions (L/W/H): 2,980 / 1,680 / 1,480 mm (117.3 / 66.1 / 58.3 in)
Seating Capacity: 3 (+ 1 child)
Website: www.toyota.ca

SOURCE: AUTOS.CANADA.COM