Our friends electric

Andrew Clark
The Guardian, Monday 12 January 2009

With an environmental paint job of birds and leaves, Toyota unveiled a lightweight battery-powered commuter car yesterday, which it plans to mass produce by 2012. The Japanese carmaker, which recently overtook General Motors to become the world's top carmaker, is putting much of its serious financial firepower into the idea of a plug-in urban car. Dubbed the FT-EV, it shares a platform with Toyota's iQ, which is already on sale in Japan. It can go up to 50 miles on a charge - enough, Toyota argues, for a typical commuter. The firm wants to capitalise on the success of its Prius hybrid to become a global leader in green technology, with a target of selling 1m petrol-electric hybrids a year by the next decade. It has also rolled out a version of its Camry saloon powered by natural gas. Irv Miller, Toyota's vice-president for environmental affairs, said last year's soaring petrol prices were no anomaly: "It was a brief glimpse of our future."