I guess it's a Toyota Concept called the Volta. It's a 'Hybrid Supercar'. Looks good to me. But, if it's a Hybrid, there goes the price. The last 'rumor' car was a bit nicer looking, and supposedly priced at about $35,000. In the grand scheme, that's not bad, considering my '88 cost $28,975 new.
Interesting... Here's another Toyota concept called the Alessandro Volta
Don't give up the ship too soon. As this is not the first hybrid Toyota have made, they may be learning how to maker them cheaper.
OTOH, there is some sense at this stage of the tech's development and marketing to aiming any hybrid at the mid-to-upper end of the price curve.
Some speculations...
Wealthy people help to make a vehicle a success because they tend to buy new then display their vehicle to similar people (friends, business contacts, other club members &c) during use -- sometimes deliberately. They also can afford to keep the vehicle fully maintained, which is important to preserving its reliability; and this encourages a "good feeling" about the product in the market.
On top of that, wealthy people are often seen as arbiters of good taste: "Hey, Arnie has a Humvie, it must be good." That alone is likely to shift a few units. (Was it DiCaprio who bought 4 early Priuses? Or were they Version 2?)
On top of _that_, if you are going to make a costly vehicle, load it with bells and whistles, to make sure that nice honey attracts enough flies. (So to speak.) This means there'll be a dead zone in the pricing band of innovative products: not worth designing a product (here, a hybrid) to be sold down in that band. The Prius was, I think, affected by that thinking but at least T had enough sense to ensure the bells and whistles were good ones.
The electric motor is like the alternator, and the gasoline motor is smaller in a hybrid than in a traditional car, so aside from the battery pack, hybrids shouldn't cost much more to build.
Toyota economized on the Prius by not having any gages (speedometer, tachometer, fuel, oil, volts, temperature) and by not providing any knobs for climate control. Speedometer and fuel went on a cheap LCD panel, and climate control is done by touch-screen LCD. I'd bet the backup camera costs less than a fuel gage on a traditional car.
Hey, Arnie has a broken femur! I'm gonna go skiing and try to do an aerial 180 in a terrain park!!
Although the MP3 player really could provide more characters in song titles, jeesh, they have an entire laptop-sized LCD there.
I think you're dreaming if you think they'll make something that affordable. At a minimum, it will need the power and performance (and hence price) of the IS350, which is around $40k...
And it's also $125,000!!
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