Plug-in Prius lands on UK roads, details emerge

Today the UK caught up with France, Japan and the US with the launch of a year-long trial of the Prius Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle (PHV). I've just returned from the Hyde Park launch event, where I chatted with the Toyoto and EDF folk behind the project. Here's the lowdown.

The car looks like today's Prius -- it's cosmetically identical aside from a plug socket on the right of the car -- but promises greater  fuel economy. The Prius PHV's extended battery can be recharged with a mains socket at home and road-side charging stations on the go.

Toyota told the crowd of journos and politicos -- including the Conservative's Tim Yeo and Labour's John Hutton -- that the Prius PHV uses 60 per cent less petrol than a normal Prius on journeys under 25km.

The car can run for 6.2 miles on pure electric power and takes two hours to recharge. Toyota's chief hybrid architect, Koei Saga, said he didn't believe drivers would be willing to wait for a longer charge.

Toyota also explained a key difference between the PHV and the normal Prius: it can hit 60mph on electric power alone. That's up from 30mph on the current model.

Prius PHVs will be available in 2009 for company fleets, but Toyota was cagey when I spoke to them about an on-sale date for UK consumers. The best answer I could get was the car would be available within five years at the latest. Price is a closely guarded secret.

Toyota's Saga also talked about the Prius' future direction. He said battery management was the main area of R&D, and ruled out diesel hybrids in the short term because of the high price tag of a diesel hybrid. "In the long run", he added, "diesel hybrids are something we'd consider."

The Prius PHV trial is in conjuntion with 50 jammy staff at energy company EDF, who will see how the Prius PHV performs on UK roads. EDF said it'd try to include employees who have microgeneration technology at home, such as solar panels and wind turbines.

If you can't wait for Toyota to sell the official Prius PHV, you could contact Amberjac Projects which mods the vanilla Prius into a plug-in conversion. Or you could start saving for 2009's Honda Insight, which is being billed as the world's cheapest hybrid.

Photos of the Prius PHV in London