Tesla Motors has said its contract to supply Toyota with battery packs and motors for a rechargeable crossover will conclude this year.
Bloomberg News noted that Toyota, which owns a 2.4% stake in Tesla, said in May 2012 it would buy the company’s components for 2,600 electric RAV4 EVs over three years. Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer, had said he expected Toyota to extend the agreement that was initially worth as much as US$100m, based on a July 2011 filing.
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“Toyota is expected to end the current RAV4 EV model this year,” Tesla said in a quarterly filing. While the supply deal generated $15.1m of revenue for Tesla in the quarter that ended 31 March, “our production activities under this program are expected to end in 2014,” Tesla said.
Toyota hasn’t announced plans to conclude the RAV4 EV programme, John Hanson, a company spokesman, told Bloomberg News.
“This was a project for a specific number of vehicles that we planned to sell for a specific number of years,” Hanson said. “We have not made any announcement about the relationship or what we’ll do with Tesla in the future.”
Models such as the RAV4 EV sell mainly in California, which requires large automakers to offer some pollution-free vehicles. Toyota has sold 1,594 electric RAV4s since 2012 to the end of April, according to reports from the company.
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By GlobalDataIn 2015, Toyota is to begin California sales of a hydrogen fuel cell sedan, another type of zero-emission vehicle that fulfills California’s ZEV mandate, Bloomberg added.
