EDF Energy and Toyota on Wednesday morning in London said they had teamed up to road trial the first plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHV) introduced by a car manufacturer to the UK although the automaker did acknowledge that there are already a number of privately retrofitted Priuses already on the road.
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Trials started today and will continue for over a year. Toyota’s right-hand drive Prius PHV will join EDF’s company fleet and will be tested by employees under daily driving conditions.
Toyota will start selling a redesigned Prius PHV with lithium-ion battery pack to fleets here in Europe towards the end of next year. just-auto has been told a plug-in facility – extending the speed and distance at which the vehicle can drive on electric-only power – is likely to be an option when consumer sales start as owners with street-only parking may not have access to domestic power points.
The UK trial follows one in France launched a year ago. The trial here is intended to evaluate vehicle performance within an urban environment, vehicle infrastructure requirements and driver behaviours and expectations.
A new charging and invoicing system is incorporated in the PHV and compatible with new public charging stations, which aim to make electric power more accessible on public roads and car parks, reducing the cost to the customer. EDF Energy has so far helped install the first 40 and more are planned in coming months.
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By GlobalDataFor short distances the PHV can be driven as an electric vehicle, resulting in a silent, zero emissions drive. For longer distances, PHV works as a conventional hybrid vehicle. just-auto tried a prototype in Japan a year ago and found it could not only go further on electricity alone but also much faster.
Toyota said on Wednesday that a PHV is “the best of both worlds”: it enhances the benefits of hybrid technology, while avoiding the constraints traditionally linked with electric vehicles.
Tests so far show that fuel efficiency is significantly higher than for the current Prius – on trips up to 25km (about 15 miles), the PHV consumes roughly 60% less fuel than the standard hybrid Prius. One of the research objectives of the UK tests is to confirm such PHV performance.
The tests also aim at understanding consumers’ acceptance of the new technology.
The big question here will be the cost of the electricity – EDF hiked its domestic rates again in July, by 17% after a 7.9% increase in January and, along with the other major suppliers in the UK, is facing calls from angry consumers and some politicians for the government to put a ‘windfall tax’ on its profits.
UK electricity is generated mainly by coal or gas and plans to build a new coal-fired station in Kent have recently met with environmentalist opposition.
