Nissan and Toyota are pouring resources into eco-friendly car programmes in a bid to become the ‘green’ brands of choice for 21st century consumers. And while both manufacturers are working on a variety of battery-electric, hybrid and fuel-cell programmes, the Japanese rivals are taking a subtly different approach.
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For Toyota, hybrids are the future as it continues to build on the success of the Prius. But Nissan is concentrating on battery technology through its partnership with Japanese battery-maker NEC.
Toyota UK managing director Miguel Fonseca said future Toyota hybrids would continue to use petrol rather than diesel for the internal combustion element of the drivetrain. “Petrol has better efficiency at high RPM than diesel, while electric motors are better at low revs,” he said. So, while European rivals such as Volkswagen and Peugeot are pursuing diesel hybrids, Toyota is sticking to petrol.
Fonseca said Toyota was still working on a ‘miniaturised’ hybrid drivetrain for its new iQ city car, which will go on sale before the end of the year with conventional petrol or diesel engines. “The problem with iQ is it’s so well packaged for its size it’s difficult to accommodate a full hybrid drivetrain,” said Fonseca.
Meanwhile Nissan displayed a battery-electric prototype of its Japanese market Cube city car. This won’t be coming to Europe – but Nissan will commercialise an electric car before the end of 2010, thanks to advances in lithium ion battery technology, said Pierre Loing, vice-president of product planning.
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By GlobalData“European sales will start in 2011, and we would like to be mass producing electric cars – not just one or two hundred – by 2012,” he said. Nissan has already piloted an electric city car in Japan called the Hypermini, and much of that technology will transfer to the new car – which will be an all-new model, not just an EV derivative of an existing model.
Bringing EVs to market relies on “one or two technical breakthroughs” taking place – principally in terms of recharge cycles for the lithium ion batteries. Also part of the plan is Nissan’s so-called “supermotor” – effectively two electric motors in one that can drive both front wheels, rather than having separate motors driving each wheel.
“Nissan’s first-generation European EV will be able to seat four or five adults and have a range of 100 miles [160km],” said Loing. Plus Li-Ion batteries will allow an 80% recharge in around 20-25 minutes. Ultimately, Nissan will have a line-up of electric cars, as well as plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars, which will not be available until “no earlier than 2015”.
