Fuji Heavy To Develop Electric Car With TEPCO
Date: 05-Sep-05
Country: Japan
Over the next year, the partners aim to develop cheaper and more efficient technology to meet several conditions including a minimum driving range of 80 km (50 miles) and a recharging time of 15 minutes for 80 percent of the battery's capacity.
Japan's biggest electricity provider would purchase Fuji Heavy's electric cars for internal use if the price were limited to around 3 million yen ($27,290), a Fuji Heavy spokesman said, and test them for practicality, feasibility and cost.
Fuji Heavy currently has a prototype mini electric car that runs on a lithium ion battery co-developed with NEC Corp.
The auto maker said last month it was also aiming to market a hybrid gasoline-electric car in 2007 using the high-performance battery, which lasts 15 years, or about twice as long as those used in today's hybrid cars.
Most auto makers have given up on pure electric vehicles, instead focusing on hydrogen-fuelled fuel-cell vehicles and gasoline-electric hybrids as an ecological alternative to internal combustion-engine cars because they found that electric cars required too many hours of recharging for relatively short distances.
Japan's Mitsubishi Motors Corp. is the only other major auto maker with plans to commercialise electric vehicles. It now has a prototype that can run 150 km (93 miles) on about 10 hours of recharging, also using a lithium ion battery, and is aiming to expand the driving range to 250 km (155 miles) by 2010.
Mitsubishi Motors has said it was also talking with TEPCO and other utilities to exchange information on electric car-related technology as part of its aim to market a practical and affordable electric minicar.
If the issues of charging time, driving range and cost are resolved, electric vehicles could be a more attractive alternative to fuel-cell vehicles, which require massive investment for hydrogen fuelling stations, among other hurdles.
During the experiment, TEPCO would also gauge the possibility of switching some or all of the 3,000 or so in-house small cars that it uses for travelling short distances beyond March 2006.
It estimated that if all 3,000 were switched to electric vehicles, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 2,800 tonnes a year and fuel costs cut by 190 million yen ($1.73 million) annually.
Fuji Heavy said it would aim to offer electric vehicles to other companies through technology gained from the experiment, with the eventual aim of commercialising them for personal use.
Shares in Fuji Heavy, held one-fifth by General Motors Corp. , jumped as much as 4 percent on local media reports of the imminent announcement, before closing up 2.1 percent at 490 yen.
TEPCO shares rose 0.18 percent to 2,720 yen.
($1=109.91 Yen)
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