Toyota TES-ERA Sports EV

The TES-ERA EV, developed by the Toyota Engineering Society, is an EV sports car based on the Toyota Sera, a two-door coupe produced for the Japanese domestic market in the 1990's. It features gullwing doors, and the color scheme, with it's Milky Way theme, was designed by elementary school students in Toyota City.

"The Toyota Engineering Society organizes group activities, and we did a project where people got together to build a car. Because the budget was much smaller than usual for developing a car, most of the work was done by hand. The idea was to develop a gullwing sports car that would excite users of the future, including today's children."

The car has a clean, white interior in line with it's futuristic exterior, and features switchless operation using touchscreens, adding a game-like element to the driving experience.

"You can use touchscreen on the steering wheel to select a meter design. When you've chosen a design, you can swipe , and jump to the big display in the middle, the design of that display changes. Our design concept here was for kids in the gaming generation to enjoy driving a car as if it was a game."

The car's motor and inverter are from the Lexus RX hybrid system, and it has a new, 15.7 kWh lithium ion battery.

"This EV has a range of over 80 km for urban driving. We actually entered it in a race, and under race conditions, it can go about 50 km. The motor output is 123 kW, and we've used a twin combination. As well as the battery, we've added a storage capacitor, to achieve regenerative turbo, like in the F1 KERS."