Toyota and Nissan take different eco approach

Both Nissan and Toyota have been working hard to come up with eco-friendly car programmes in a bid to become the ‘green’ brand of choice for modern consumers.

The companies are working on battery electric, hybrid and fuel-cell programmes, but the rivals are taking a different approach to one another.

Toyota, for example, sees hybrids are the future, building on the success of the Prius. Nissan, on the other hand, is concentrating on battery technology, working closely with NEC to achieve its goal.

Miguel Fonseca, managing director of Toyota UK, said future hybrids would continue to use petrol rather than diesel for the internal combustion element of the drivetrain.

“Petrol has better efficiency at high RPM than diesel, while electric motors are better at low revs,” he said, offering a different view to Volkswagen and Peugeot, who are both going for diesel hybrids instead of petrol.

Toyota is still working on a miniaturised hybrid drivetrain for its new iQ city car, which will go on sale before the end of the year with conventional petrol or diesel engines.

“The problem with iQ is it’s so well packaged for its size it’s difficult to accommodate a full hybrid drivetrain,” said Fonseca.

Nissan, on the other hand, is displaying its battery-electric prototype of the Japanese market Cube city car at the London International Motor Show.

This won’t be coming to Europe, incidentally, but Nissan do plan to commercialise an electric car before the end of 2010, thanks to Lithium Ion battery tech advances.

“European sales will start in 2011, and we would like to be mass producing electric cars – not just one or two hundred – by 2012,” said Pierre Loing, vice president of product planning at Nissan.

An electric city car has already been piloted by Nissan in Japan, dubbed the Hypermini. Much of that technology will transfer to the new vehicle.

“Nissan’s first-generation European [electric vehicle] will be able to seat four to five adults and have a range of 100 miles,” said Loing.

“Plus Li-Ion batteries will allow an 80 per cent recharge in around 20 to 25 minutes. Ultimately, Nissan will have a line-up of electric cars, as well as plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars, which will not be available until “no earlier than 2015″.

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