Toyota's compact FT-CH unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show broadens the market for hybrid vehicles - smaller, funkier and cheaper than the Prius and aimed at younger buyers.
Designed by Toyota's European Design and Development center in Nice, France, the company says the FT-CH targets the high energy appeal of '8-Bit Generation'. 'Popularized in the early 80's, 8-bit microprocessor technology dominated the budding home video game industry. Today 8-bit is considered a specific retro style that is embraced by such things as 8-bit genre music and 8-bit inspired art,' Toyota says.
So the FT-CH is all about fun, bright colours, style and innovation. It's almost 60 centimetres shorter than the Prius and is primarily a car for the city environment.
Toyota says the Prius brand has become a torch-bearer for hybrid vehicles and the FT-CH points to a future 'family' of Prius models. Within the next few years Toyota plans to sell more than one million hybrid vehicles annually - the majority of them in North America - and has eight new hybrid vehicles already on the drawing board.
Naturally improving battery technology is critical to hybrid vehicle development and Toyota's partnership with Panasonic has been hugely successful. Toyota now does in-house development of advanced nickel-metal hydride batteries and by later this year Panasonic EV Energy (PEVE) will have three separate, fully operational production facilities with a combined capacity of more than one million units per year.
Toyota already has plug-in hybrids undertaking public field testing and just around the corner are battery electric vehicles (2012) and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (2015) - all for global markets.
The time is now, according to Toyota.
'A century after the invention of the automobile, we must reinvent it with powertrains that significantly reduce or eliminate the use of conventional petroleum fuels. One of many alternatives is through what is commonly called the electrification of the automobile and by far the single most successful example of this has been the petrol-electric hybrid,' explained Toyota's North American president, Jim Lentz.
