2010
A global demonstration program involving 600 Toyota Prius Plug-in pre-production test cars began in late 2009 in Japan and by mid 2010 field testing had begun in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The commercial version is expected to cost between US$3,000 to US$5,000 more than the conventional Prius and Toyota announced it expects to sell 20,000 units a year initially.
Sales of the BYD F3DM to the general public began in Shenzhen in March 2010, and only 417 units were sold during 2010.
On March 31, 2010, the first factory-built Chevrolet Volt was produced at the Detroit Hamtramck Assembly Plant in order to test the production line and for quality control purposes, both of the tooling and the pre-production vehicles produced before regular production began.
On October 2010 Lotus Engineering unveiled the Lotus CityCar at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, a plug-in series hybrid concept car designed for flex-fuel operation on ethanol, or methanol as well as regular gasoline. The lithium battery pack provides an all-electric range of 60 kilometres (37 mi), and the 1.2-liter flex-fuel engine kicks in to allow to extend the range to more than 500 kilometres (310 mi).
Henrik Fisker showed the first production model of the Fisker Karma at the 2010 Paris Motor Show.
General Motors began deliveries of the Chevrolet Volt in the United States in December 2010. The Volt has an all-electric range of 35 miles (56 km) according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. A total of 326 Volts were delivered to retails customers during 2012.
Read more about this topic: History Of Plug-in Hybrids