Toyota, Honda to Start Selling Electric Vehicles
Toyota and Honda, Japan’s Nos. 1 and 3 auto makers, said Monday that they will begin marketing their first electric passenger vehicles in California next year, the first importers to challenge General Motors Corp.’s EV1 coupe unveiled in January.
Both the Toyota and Honda vehicles will present stiff competition to the two-seat EV1 because they will be the first mass-produced vehicles to use advanced nickel-metal hydride batteries, which have twice the power of the traditional lead-acid batteries that will power GM’s EV1.
“They can’t let GM or anyone else get too far ahead of them,” said Bill Van Amburg, spokesman for Calstart, a consortium of companies pushing for an advanced transportation industry in California.
Toyota Motor Sales USA, Toyota’s Torrance-based U.S. unit, will market electric versions of its four-seat RAV4 sport-utility vehicle to fleet users in California, starting in the fall of 1997, a spokesman told The Times.
Toyota will initially sell 320 of the Japanese-made front-wheel-drive RAV4 EVs. With its advanced battery, the RAV4 EV is expected to have a range of more than 120 miles, compared with the GM EV1’s 90 miles.
American Honda Motor Co., meanwhile, said it will begin leasing a Japanese-made four-seat vehicle called the Honda EV starting in the spring of 1997 to fleet users and individual consumers in California. The Honda EV will have a range of about 125 miles. Honda declined to discuss production figures.
Neither auto maker would say how much the vehicles will cost until they are unveiled Wednesday at separate news conferences in Los Angeles. The companies will unveil the vehicles at the California Alternative Fuel Vehicle Partnership Conference in Los Angeles and will display them at the Eco-Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center over the weekend.
GM’s two-seat EV1, to be assembled in Michigan, is to be priced in the mid-$30,000 range when it goes on sale later this year.
The programs are in keeping with agreements made by the seven major auto makers with the California Air Resources Board, which relaxed requirements for zero-emission electric vehicles at its meeting last month.
In a ruling assailed by environmentalists, the air board lifted a mandate requiring auto makers to sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles by 1998. Instead, it entered into agreements with each of the auto makers, setting voluntary goals for the introduction of such vehicles by the turn of the century.
Honda agreed to produce up to 506 vehicles by 2000, with as many as 101 in the 1998 model year. Toyota agreed to 677 by 2000, with 135 in the 1998 model year, according to ARB spokesman Jerry Martin.
Still, the timing of the news from Honda on Monday took some observers by surprise.
For one thing, Honda had pushed for relaxation of the air board’s requirements by arguing that its advanced batteries, more complex versions of the kind used in cell phones and laptop computers, would not be ready for commercial production until 2000.
On Monday, a Honda executive said introduction of the new EV next year was not inconsistent with its previous statements.
“These are not commercialized batteries,” said Ben Knight, Honda vice president for research and development. “These are pilot or limited-production batteries, part of the process of getting towards commercially viable, mass-produced batteries.”
At the Air Resources Board, Chairman John Dunlap denied that the rapid introduction of new electric vehicles means the board’s lifting of its 1998 mandate was premature.
“We’re heartened by these announcements,” he said. “It shows . . . that there is a market, and that [auto makers] want to be able to get their technology out there quickly.”
He also brushed off the suggestion that auto makers had misrepresented the degree to which their technology was ready for the market.
“What this signifies is that they have sufficient confidence in these new batteries, and they want to get them on the market sooner than later,” he said.
Observers saw the Japanese auto makers’ initiatives as a reaction to General Motors, which is trying to seize the high ground in the new market for electric vehicles. In addition to the EV1 passenger coupe, GM has said it will sell an electric version of its S-series pickup truck starting next year.
The Toyota RAV4 EV will take six to eight hours to recharge on a 220-volt, 40-amperage system, the same system used to power a household dryer, Toyota spokesman Jeremy Barnes said.
By contrast, GM’s EV1 takes 15 hours to recharge with a conventional wall socket, or only three with a special inductive charging system.
Honda did not discuss details of its vehicle’s charging system. The Honda EV accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in 18.7 seconds, and has a top speed of more than 80 mph.
Times staff writer Marla Cone contributed to this report.
