Oregon City To Get Quartet of Toyota RAV4-EVs For 'Station Car' Program
PORTLAND, Or. - Old RAV4-EVs, unlike old EV-1s, apparently never die. Or, at least, never were crushed.
Four of the battery-powered experiments from the late 1990s have surfaced in this riverfront Oregon town notged for its wide variety of public transit programs - programs that actually work, by all accounts.
The Toyota RAV4-EVs are part of a program to develop an electric charging network for what Portland area officials call the arrival of future zero- and low emission vehicles.
Portland's power structure is to be commended for planning so far ahead, as it is likely to be a few years, or more, before there is much out there to benefit from the downtown charging stations.
But in anticipation, the city is working with Toyota Motor Co., Portland General Electric, and Portland State University and its partner, the University of California at Irvine, to set up a "station car" program to shuttle people - in rechargeable electric cars - from various mass transit terminals to a variety of downtown and suburban locales.
Toyota is placing four rebuilt RAV4-EVs in the program to get it started, and the city utility, Portland General Electric, has just announced that it is installing five new plug-in charging stations in the Portland and Salem areas, bringing the total to six with more being planned.
The Portland program actually will be an extension of UC Irvine's Southern California-based ZEV-NET station car program, the nation's longest running test of shared electric vehicles.
So far, the old RAV4-EVs and early models of Toyota's "e-com" electric city car prototype are in use, but Toyota said last mo nth that it will launch a new battery-electric city car in 2010 - and that's one of the future EVs Portland is waiting for.
The RAV4-EVs being donated to the Portland program are refurbished 2002 and 2003 models, part of a fleet of 1,485 electric RAV4s Toyota placed into service in California from 1998-2003 as part of the state's much-modified and diluted Zero Emission Vehicle mandate program.
The compact SUVS use nickel-metal hydride batteries and have a range of about 60 miles on a single charge.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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- John O'Dell September 24, 2008, 3:35 AM
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John,
Can you confirm that the range of the four rebuilt RAV4-EVs is 60 miles?
The prior range was 100-120 miles. If the 60 mile figure is correct, I am assuming Toyota is using around half the batteries in order to keep the cost down.
If you would, please e-mail me at gblencoe@hydrogendiscoveries.com and clarify this. I linked to this article and I want to make sure I double-check the information.
Thanks,
Greg
For anyone who is wondering..Toyota says range is 60-80 miles, lower than original new model specs because batteries have been though a lot of charge-discharge cycles and simply won't hold as much of a charge as when brand new.