Volt - direct drive in Europe?

Toyota sold them. Once in a while you see one come on the market. The sell for an obscene price.

Tom

 

About $90,000 if I remember correctly!!!!

 

Interesting. Whats the reason they stoped selling them? My wild guess is battery costs made them loose money on each one?

 

One of the reason was the patent issue for large format (more than 8Ah) NiMH cells.

"In 2001, oil company Texaco purchased General Motors' share in GM Ovonics. Texaco was itself acquired by rival Chevron several months later. The same year, Ovonics filed a patent infringement suit against Toyota's battery supplier, Panasonic, that ultimately succeeded in restricting the use of its large format NiMH batteries to certain transportation uses."

Read more about it: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries"]here[/ame].