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Toyota and Tesla May Work Together Again
cartechboy writes: Tesla and Toyota have already worked together a few times. The factory in which Tesla builds the electric Model S? It bought that from Toyota. The Toyota RAV4 EV? The battery and software tuning was done by Tesla. Now it sounds like Tesla and Toyota might have another significant project in the pipeline in the next two or three years. Tesla CEO Musk said such a project could be "on a much higher volume level" than the firm's last project with Toyota, the RAV4 EV. Toyota currently has a 2.4 percent stake in Tesla Motors and has sold 2,130 RAV4 EVs through August. For its part, Toyota has no comment regarding Musk's statements about the future project. Given Toyota's stance on electric cars, Musk's comment is a bit confusing. So what exactly will this joint project be?
Because pure electric cars are new technology that are cool and interesting to read about. Because, for the moment, it still reads like an underdog story(not that I actually buy into that being true). Because are we really that interested in what, say, Microsoft is up to now?
The current Priuses and other Toyota offerings are parallel hybrids. That is, they have transmissions that directly drive the wheels using the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine).
In a series hybrid, each wheel has it's own motor, and the ICE engine runs at a steady speed that is very efficient to generate electricity that is then used to recharge the batteries that are fed to the electric motors.
A second part of my guess is that Toyota is licensing the recharging technology from Tesla, so that they can use the supercharger network as well. This way they can have a vehicle that can run 100% off of electricity only, but have a ICE engine that is available at any time to back that up (faster refueling, can go anywhere there is a gas station, etc.)
Hey, sometimes you just want to make a crash a little more literal.
Or a race condition.