Toyota Motor

Huge sales opportunities for EVs and their components into East Asia

Those seeking to create multibillion dollar businesses in electric vehicles, their components, intellectual property and services should look at the world's largest market - East Asia. This region of the world purchases about 56% of the global market value of electric vehicles for land, sea and air and it will still be doing that in ten years time. For Western companies to take this huge opportunity seriously they first need to slay six myths.

Progress in Japan - part three

Like Toyota and Fiat, Nissan is one of the few automotive companies with a range of industrial vehicles that can also leverage advances in electrification.

Progress in Japan - part one

The Japanese postal service plans on 21,000 electric vehicles. Japan Post has been testing the vehicles since 2009 to evaluate their cost and performance.

Global progress with electric taxis

Taxis are an excellent proving ground for electric vehicle technologies because they are professionally managed, intensively used, standardised in fleets and can have depots dedicated to their needs. That is why they are being used to trial fuel cells and/or lithium ion batteries in, China, Japan, the USA, the UK and elsewhere. Battery swapping is more feasible with standardised, centrally managed taxis than with the confusion of design and management of electric cars.

Fear of electric vehicle grid crash

There is great interest in planned supergrids controlling the time they charge electric vehicles.

Toyota targets India

Following poor sales of the world's best selling hybrid electric car the Prius in China, Toyota the world's largest carmaker, wants its first compact car in India, Etios, to be a segment leader in India's huge compact car market, says Sandeep Singh, deputy managing director (marketing) at Toyota Kirloskar Motor.

New grouping and support for China's EVs

China's 16 centrally-managed State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) has recently formed an association to assist development of electric cars.

Tesla & Toyota formalize agreement to develop electric version of RAV4

TESLA MOTORS, INC. (Tesla) and TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (TMC) have signed an agreement to initiate the development of an electric version of the RAV4 as announced in May of this year by Elon Musk and Akio Toyoda.

Zinc air batteries

Many companies are now developing zinc air batteries and fuel cells and some actually have them in production. Most hope to make traction batteries this way sooner or later.

Germany catching up in electric vehicles

Germany is the strongest trading nation in Europe with the broadest and deepest automotive activity. However, the strategy of the German government and its automotive industry has been deeply flawed.

Charging infrastructure urgently needed

Over 100 manufacturers now offer pure electric on-road cars yet their combined sales remain much less than one company, Ingersoll Rand, achieves with pure electric golf cars. The main problem is that there is almost nowhere to plug them in.

Huge sales opportunities for EVs and their components into East Asia

Those seeking to create multibillion dollar businesses in electric vehicles, their components, intellectual property and services should look at the world's largest market - East Asia.

Electric Vehicles in East Asia

The Western media obsess about electric cars to be made in the West, many of them being both overpriced and underperforming in global terms. This misses the fact that 56% of the value of sales of electric vehicles is and will remain in East Asia and cars only account for about half of the value of the electric vehicle business worldwide.

Tesla plugs into Wall Street

US electric automaker Tesla Motors has gone public.

UK's largest Electric Vehicle trial - first findings

The first results of a UK-wide electric and low carbon vehicle testing project have been published

Here comes China - part four

A large number of Chinese car manufacturers - possibly more than the rest of the world combined - are now offering electric microcars.

Electric Vehicles in the UK - Part two

Nissan of Japan has been proud of its conventional car manufacturing facility in Sunderland UK because it is one of the most efficient in the world.

Electric Vehicles in the UK - Part One

The UK has now produced a host of small companies involved in most aspects of electric vehicles and their components and some long established companies have successfully moved into the field.

Electric cars - learning from the past

In 1880, they said that the future of the car was electric. In April 2010, Bill Ford of Ford Motor Company said "It appears that the biggest game-changer will be electric vehicles."

Brushless DC motor driver technology advances green electric race cars

The most recent instalment of the World Econo Move event held in Akita, Japan on May 4th and 5th saw an exciting example of extreme green electric vehicles being pushed to achieve maximum travel distance in 2 hours on a single, standard form factor, lead acid 12 volt battery.