It says "which can be recharged from a home electrical outlet, will target leasing customers, Toyota said."

Why leasing customers? Is this Toyota, or GM?

Hey, looking at the bright side though, "Toyota promises plug-in hybrid vehicle by 2010." Awesome!


"The joint venture that Toyota set up with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic products, will begin producing lithium-ion batteries in 2009 and move into full-scale production in 2010, Toyota said."

"On Tuesday, Toyota said it will start making the Camry hybrid in Australia and Thailand as part of its efforts to step up production of "green" cars around the world."

Unlike GM, Toyota appears to understand that making the jump to plug-in hybrids will require incremental steps due the high cost of the the battery back until production ramps up. GM seems to be going down the all or nothing plug-in only path (with the Volt) where the only decent hybrid from GM will be too expensive for mass acceptance and sales won't be large enough for economies of scale to gradually kick in. Of course, GM will then proclaim. See - hybrid technology is just too expensive. So buy a Camaro instead.

Edited to add: Hopefully I'm wrong about the Volt and it sells for less than $30K on day one - without subsidies. Maybe A123Systems can pull it off (for GM).

What does GM do when they shoot them selfs in the foot, (EV1)? They change feet. :doh::doh::doh::doh:

I'm with Rybold...it's great that a Toyota PHEV is going to be available in 2010, but if I'm interpreting this correctly, only to leasing customers. I'm sure there is a good reason for this..guess we will find out more as time goes by...

OK, I'm making a guess here, but....
When GM released the EV1, it was available as a lease only. Wasn't that because the batteries were so expensive to make that the only way they could make the car affordable was to retain ownership of the batteries? Could Toyota be using the same financial model for their LiOn batteries? Perhaps they are feeling a bit rushed to market by the Volt and are releasing the car before they have a decent financial model in place.

Then they should offer the lease and the buy option. If the buy option doesn't make sense vs the lease, then people will just lease. But if people want to pay a premium to own, whether the payback time makes sense or not, then that should be up to them.

I wonder if plug-ins will be that popular--unless gas is about $8 a gallon. At $4-6, most people would be satisfied with a 50 mpg hybrid like the Prius. That assumes the car price stays in the mid-20s. There are a lot of people without garages who might find overnight charging an inconvenience. And then you have the problem of extended trips.

GM is counting on their lobby down in Washington D.C. to get them the $7K rebate for both the customer and GM alike, so the reVolt is affordable.

Let us not forget that Toyota is planning to ramp up production of the Prius. Toyota likely sees Prius as the "mainstream," and perhaps since the PHEV will be leased to fleet customers only (other news articles said "fleet"), it will be like a "beta version," for real-world testing in 2010, and then hopefully be made available to the public in 2011 or - I know it's far away - 2012.

Is the PHEV Prius going to have lithium ion because the Chevron patent still prevents NiMH of sufficient size for a plug in?

That's probably it. Besides, you don't see many people flocking to the current aftermarket PHEV options, so why would anyone really want to buy the first $30k PHEV? Better to lease it for a few years and then let Toyota take it back and crack open the battery to see how it held up. You can always turn around and lease another one if you liked it. They'll make it available for sale when it's good and ready.

(All PHEV lovers can start flaming now - I think PHEVs are a great idea and I'll get one too some day, but only if the battery can truly last the life of the car, which for me is about 250k miles.)

"Regular" people can lease a car too.....

leasing customers = Beta testers????

Depends. If the lease contract do not include the option to buy, then yes... they are beta testers.

Good example. See the Honda FCX. No one will know what the real world limitations are with fuel cell. So it is best to just least them, and bring them back at end of lease to validate if the system has the long term potential (or not).

I think you are entirely missing the point of a Plug-in Hybrid.

It should have enough battery power to go all electric for a reasonable distance (what that is, I don't know, for me: 40 miles would be great ) AND has an on-board power source of some sort to extend driving distance to a 'normal' length for non electric vehicles. My current non plug-in Prius can go about 1/2 mile on electric (if I force EV) under good conditions (i.e. not mid winter and no hills) without driving the battery down to 2 bars and over 500 miles beyond that to the next gas station with ~ 60 miles of buffer. Compare that to MAYBE 300 miles for an H2 with a 32 gallon tank and little margin for error.

I expect a plug-in Prius will increase the EV only distance, allow you to select EV only for trips within the EV range and not change the gas distance. It will continue to be the same 'whatever combination of ICE/Electric is most efficient for conditions at any point in time' power to the wheels system when not using the 'pre-stored energy' from plugging in.

The proposed Chevy Volt is different - it is all EV drive all the time but when the battery runs down, an 'on board range extending power source' (talk about open ended - could be gas, diesel, hydrogen, natural gas, whatever) will generate electricity to continue on for hundreds of miles to the next fueling station for the 'on-board range extending power source'. This is exactly the way diesel trans operate. They have no 'direct drive' from the diesel.

I do agree that a plug-in will be undesirable for people who have nowhere to plug it in. However, it may be a chicken and egg thing. Since they can be plugged in to ANY standard outlet, as opposed to special outlets needed by earlier EVs, I suspect 'charging areas' will crop up. For instance, the parking lots where I work all have light towers, they could add a weather-proof 4 outlet box on each one. If they didn't want to help us be green, they could meter them. The same thing can be done at apartment buildings and parking garages.

I agree that Leasing customers are fleet vehicles for the Gov't, util companies and so forth. they probably have a lease that includes he maintenance on the vehicle and with the high mileage of fleets, toyota will have a good sample on what is needed for improvement.

Regular car leases and purchases for everyday folks, they usually come 2 years later in the "consumer" market.

Perhaps GM wants to be open ended, depending on last minute fuel cost calculations before committing. Perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps they could offer different options in different countries or multiple options simultaneously and letting the market sort it out.

Charging areas ? In northern climes there are plenty, but we usually call them "block heater outlets". There's a few at my office but they are more on the adjacent property side. I wonder if they'd notice if I slipped a plug in there every day for 8 hours... Even in hottest summer... I guess this is the EV equivalent of "siphoning gas", but hey, the outlet is right there for the taking, no ?

I'm expecting to see electronic metered outlets that take credit/debit cards in parking lots one of these days. But you'd need a lock to prevent others from unplugging your car and plugging their car.

The article is based on the Toyota Environmental Forum Held in Tokyo on June 11th.
TOYOTA: News Releases

"By 2010, TMC will introduce a plug-in hybrid vehicle equipped with a lithium-ion battery, geared toward fleet customers in Japan, United States and Europe."
They didn't use the word "Leasing customers", but "fleet customers".

Following is 23 minutes presentation video by President Watanabe.
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/vision/message/conference/080611_president_300.asx
TOYOTA: Toyota Environmental Forum

Ken@Japan