GreenCarPlanet.com

Staff and students at the University of South Australia have designed and built a prototype of what they reckon might be the future commuter car for Australian cities. Trev sounds rather impressive. He goes from 0 to 100kph in 10 secs, has a top speed of 120 km/h, with a travel range of 150+km between charges of his 7kWh 44kg lithium ion polymer battery.

When charged from mains power he costs you $1 AUD per 100km to run, using what is said to be 1/5th of the energy of conventional car. Not that there is anything conventional about Trev.

The GM Volt plug-in hybrid was supposed to hit showrooms in 2010 for $30,000. Well, apparently it’s not that easy to redesign wipers, stereos and other electrical accessories so they drain as little juice as possible from the battery. GM has announced that the first generation Volt will be “closer to $35,000″. The good news is that the late 2010 deadline hasn’t been officially pushed back, though GM says that if it can’t make it, the car might be delayed until the Spring of 2011….

Image courtesy of Mike Weston via flickr

So now we have a date: In a move that will place it in direct competition with GM - whose much-touted plug-in, the Volt, is set to be released that year - Toyota has just announced that it plans on building its first plug-in hybrid by 2010.

Katsuaki Watanabe, the Japanese carmaker’s president, also announced that his company would be rolling out a new hybrid line and one exclusive for the Lexus division by 2009. The plug-in hybrids will first be made available to Toyota’…