A fleet of eight Toyota Prius are now available to Zipcar car-sharing service members in San Francisco, Portland, and Boston. Toyota's introduction of the highly acclaimed Prius to Zipcar's fleet is part of a pilot program designed to investigate how next-generation electric technology can effectively serve large car-share programs.
"Zipcar is an ideal test bed for early consumer acceptance of EVs," says Scott Griffith, Chairman and CEO, Zipcar. "This project will allow companies to receive direct feedback from thousands of consumers in three different cities and help evaluate how EVs fit into a large-scale car sharing model."1
While it isn't officially scheduled to hit dealer showrooms until 2012, the Toyota Prius Plug-In can run on pure electric power for about 13 miles, and at a healthy, urban-friendly speeds of up to 62 mph. After 13 miles, the new vehicle then shifts into conventional Prius hybrid mode, averaging about 50 mpg.
To optimize availability and ultimately efficiency of its new Toyota Prius, Zipcar is planning to use both 110-volt outlets (charge time: 3 hours) and 220-volt chargers (charge time: 1.5 hours) to feed its fleet. The company will offer their plug-in Toyota Prius for $7.00 per hour.
It should be noted that this isn't the first time Zipcar has worked with Toyota. The company actually launched its first all-electric car-share pod in London, back in 2009. The vehicles consisted of non other than a converted plug-in Prius, and a pure electric Citroën C1. Later in 2009, the car-share company introduced the converted plug-in Toyota Prius to its San Francisco market.
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