Two Suzuki eco vehicles presented at the Tokyo Auto Show

Filed under:Suzuki, Hybrid, Tokyo Motor Show, Japanese,
What better place to exhibit ecological futuristic vehicles than the Tokyo Auto Show? Well, the 2009 edition of the Tokyo Auto Show was host of the world debut of two interesting concepts from Suzuki. More precisely, visitors got to see a Suzuki SX4 FCV (Fuel Cell Vehicle) and a Suzuki Swift Plug-in Hybrid version. Let`s start with the latter.

The Suzuki Swift Plug-in Hybrid is a supermini destined for people that travel mostly around the city for about 13 miles or the equivalent of 20 kilometers a day. The Suzuki Swift Plug-in Hybrid has been designed to be in motion mostly on electricity. The Japanese automaker did not release any performance or fuel economy figures nor did it say whether they have plans to get the Suzuki Swift Plug-in Hybrid to production state. Still, they have mentioned that the battery of the Suzuki Swift Plug-in Hybrid can be charged through any domestic plug socket and that the powertrain of the supermini consists of an electric motor that gets its juice from a lithium ion battery which can be recharged by a 600cc engine.

The Suzuki SX4 FCV (Fuel Cell Vehicle) on the other hand is planned to reach production in the very near future as it is currently undergoing testing on public roads in Japan. The Suzuki SX4 FCV (Fuel Cell Vehicle) combines a General Motors sourced high performance fuel cell with a compact capacitor that is used to recover energy during braking and using it to reduce fuel cell loading under acceleration with a Suzuki developed high pressure hydrogen tank.

I think that these two vehicles are extremely interesting and I would love to see some performance figures to find out how fuel efficient they really are.