Toyota iQ to Have Electric Variant in 2012

Toyota’s urban electric car, shown in various guises at auto shows, will be based on the diminutive iQ when it arrives in Europe, Japan and the United States in 2012, the company says. Journalists in Japan drove prototypes of the car recently at Mega Web, a showroom with a small test track run by the Toyota Motor Corporation in Tokyo.

The iQ will be sold as a Scion in the United States when it goes on sale early next year, but Toyota did not say whether the electric car would also wear the Scion badge.

“We’re not sure yet how many will go to which markets, and not sure how it will be marketed,” said John Hanson, a Toyota spokesman. “But it will arrive in 2012, at the same time as the electric RAV4 and the plug-in hybrid Prius.”

A series of “road trials” of the electric iQ will begin in the three introductory markets next year, and sales in China are also under consideration.

Mr. Hanson said Toyota would have a “wide variety of programs” to help it meet coming environmental regulations. Between 2012 and 2015, it will introduce not only the electric iQ, but also a much-publicized plug-in hybrid and a fuel-cell car. The company will also bring out 11 new or redesigned hybrid models by the end of 2012. The electric RAV4, developed with Tesla Motors, was unveiled at the Los Angeles auto show last week.

Toyota also said Thursday that it was continuing development of its fuel-cell sedan, which Mr. Hanson said would go on sale “in 2015 or earlier.” The company said “a price under 10 million yen seems attainable,” which set off some alarm bells because that translates into more than $120,000.

But Mr. Hanson said the company planned to sharply cut production costs for its fuel-cell car by the time it reaches the market.

“We obviously have to reduce costs further, and that will be done in a lot of different ways,” he said. “We’re talking about a vehicle we want to sell in volume, so it can’t have an exotic-car price. The figure the company cited is simply where we are right now, but remember we used to call fuel-cell cars ‘million-dollar’ vehicles.”

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