What has three big companies teaming up this year? Toyota, the leading car manufacturer in Japan, team up the French energy provider EDF and the Urban Community of Stratsbourg for a large-scale, three-year demonstration project on Plug-in Hybrid vehicles. A hundred of Toyota’s Prius plug-in vehicles will be used for the project, as well as a dedicated charging infrastructure.
This will serve public and private partners of Strasbourg and its region. The project is supported by the Research Fund of the French Environment and Energy Management Agency called ADEME.
The new Prius plug-in hybrid is equipped with a li-ion battery pack with an electric range of up to 20 kilometers. The vehicle can speed up to 62mph or 100 km/h on a full charge. Its CO2 emission, based on the European homologation combined cycle reads a mere 59g/km.
This project is actually only a part of Toyota’s global project involving 600 Prius hybrid vehicles. These Prius units will be deployed to Australia, Canada, Japan, and the US. The company’s objective is to further delve into the study of the technology and monitor the performance of its PHVs.
According to ToyotaFan.co.uk, the EDF-Toyota partnership can be traced back in 2007. In France, they teamed up for European trials of hybrid, plug-in vehicles. This collaboration was expanded to the United Kingdom in 2008. EDF wants to evaluate the various operational methods that can be used in the charging stations. Through the demonstration, EDF will be able to get feedback from the consumers, and know just how well accepted the driving concept is.
This study should prepare all parties for the vast commercialization of the plug-in vehicle in the near future.