Toyota experimenting with a plug-in electric Prius

July 31, 2007 Toyota’s Prius was pretty much the mass-market pioneer of hybrid cars and its sales success has demonstrated to the company that a significant sector of the community are willing to pay a premium for a car that’s both exceptionally fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly. Still, it remains a petrol-based car in its current form, using its electric motor mainly to maintain cruising speed and charging it indirectly through the output of the petrol engine. Toyota’s latest announcement could turn that equation on its head – by incorporating bigger, longer-lasting batteries and enabling plug-in overnight charging, they’re experimenting with making the Prius a primarily electric-powered car that only falls back on petrol when it absolutely has to. The changes could give the Prius massive fuel economy if used for short commutes – between 100 and 500 miles per gallon is possible. Although the company’s sticking with old-school nickel-metal hydride batteries instead of the latest lithium-based units ( and it may well only be doing this in response to some smart aftermarket operators) this could be our first glimpse of a mass-market commercial car that runs primarily on batteries, but has all the comfort of petrol to fall back on.

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