Japanese automaker Toyota has killed plans for a widespread launch of its second all-electric car, the eQ, citing a drastic misreading of the market and capabilities of electric vehicles.

Electric cars are becoming more ubiquitous with the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, and Ford Focus Electric all attracting headlines for breaking ground. However, Toyota could now be casting doubt on the viability of these vehicles.

In 2010, Toyota said it would sell several thousand of its battery-powered eQ when it officially launched the new model. Now it plans to sell just 100 eQ vehicles in the U.S. and Japan.

“Two years later, there are many difficulties,” Toyota’s vice chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada told reporters Monday. “The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society’s needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge.”

Toyota will launch just a single all-electric vehicle in the U.S., a new RAV4 that was developed with Tesla Motors. The company thinks it will sell 2,600 of the new RAV4 during the next three years.

The company will instead refocus efforts on its successful hybrid cars. Toyota said it plans to have 21 new hybrid gas-electric models that are similar in nature to the popular Prius ready to go by 2015.

Electric car charging via Alison Hancock/Shutterstock

NEW YORK — There’s a lot riding on Ford’s new Fusion sedan: Not only does the company need to reclaim lost mid-size market share from the likes of Toyota and Honda, but it also needs to prove that it can appeal to consumers interested in eco-friendly hybrid and electric cars.

Ford’s off to a strong start with the hybrid version of the new Fusion, which has received a 47MPG rating from the Environmental Protection Agency for both city and highway driving. That’s fairly close to the mileage from Toyota’s Prius, which gets around 50MPG on average, and it bests other hybrid sedans like the Camry and Honda’s Accord.

“The new Fusion is part of our plan to offer vehicles with the very best quality, fuel efficiency, safety, smart design, and value,” Ford CEO Alan Mulally said in a statement today. “We are absolutely committed to class-leading fuel efficiency as a reason to buy Ford vehicles.”

The Fusion hybrid’s 47MPG mileage makes for simple and effective marketing. Today at a launch event in Times Square, the company had dozens of people holding up “47″ signs and cheering on the figure.

Mulally joined TV personality Ryan Seacrest on stage to give away a new hybrid Fusion model, which ended up going to a speechless Canadian tourist.

To take on Chevy’s Volt, Ford will offer the Fusion Energi, a plug-in hybrid version of the car. The company estimates the Energi will see around 100-plus MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent).

Earlier this year, we got a look at the company’s first all-electric car, the Focus Electric. But where that car looked like something your grandmother would drive, the new Fusion line features an aggressive and sporty look that will turn heads.

On the non-hybrid end, Ford will offer a 2.5-liter standard Fusion (26MPG average), a 2.0-liter EcoBoost model (26MPG average), and a 1.6-liter fuel-sipping EcoBoost (29MPG average).

Photos: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Talk to any independent auto-repair mechanic, and you’ll learn that the single most important item that keeps a shop in business is brakes.

But hybrids and electric cars use their friction brakes far less aggressively than regular cars.

That’s because when the driver presses the pedal, some or all of the slowing comes from engaging an electric motor that acts as a generator to turn the car’s momentum into electricity that recharges the battery pack.

So what happens as hybrids and electrics grow more popular over the years and decades to come?

Enter Joe Ferrer, owner of BS&F Auto Parts in the Bronx, New York. He’s the star of “Hard Parts: South Bronx,” a show based on the day-to-day life of his busy store.

Ferrer says that brakes are easily 35 to 40 percent of his total business. Replacing rotors, calipers, and pads keeps his shop humming.

But on hybrids, brake jobs aren’t needed every 15,000 miles as they are on conventional cars–more like 45,000 miles, he says.

“That will have a tremendous impact on my business,” he worries. “It’s an area where parts stores and shops make a lot of money.”

And he worries that the complex power electronics and computerized control systems of electric and hybrid cars mean they’ll only be serviceable by dealerships, not independent shops.

“If we go all electric,” he says, “it’ll be a catastrophe for me.”

Over the course of a long chat with Ferrer, he admitted that such a change wasn’t likely to happen overnight.

And we noted that even the most optimistic analyses project that by 2020–eight years from now–hybrids and plug-in cars will only total perhaps 10 or 15 million vehicles, out of more than 1 billion vehicles on the planet.

In other words, there’s a very long tail of older vehicles that will continue to need servicing. And because cars are better built and longer-lasting now, they may have a longer service life than those built in the Eighties, when Ferrer first got into the business.

It’s true, however, that one selling point of battery-electric cars is how little service and repair they need.

Or as one owner crisply summarizes it, “Yep, wiper blades and tires, that’s it.”

That doesn’t apply to plug-in hybrids, though. While they too use regenerative braking, they still carry engines, which will need exhaust systems, accessory-drive belts, spark plugs, and so forth.

But over time, Ferrer probably does have a point: Continuing system integration, more electronics, and improved quality mean that independent shops may have less opportunity to do the run-of-the-mill repairs that have kept them in business for a century.

What do you think? Should Ferrer worry, or is it the next generation of auto mechanics who may not be able to open their own shops?

Leave us your thoughts in the Comments below.

And if you want more of Joe Ferrer, you can watch “Hard Parts” on Speed TV (Tuesdays at 9 pm Eastern, 6 pm Pacific).

This story originally appeared on GreenCarReports.com, one of VentureBeat’s syndication partners. Photos: GreenCarReports.com.

We already know that April was a great month for Toyota Prius hybrid sales, but it turns out that the first quarter of the year produced stellar sales numbers for hybrids in general, as well as plug-in electric cars.

More than 100,000 hybrids and plug-in cars — 113,457 — were sold in January, February, and March combined, against roughly 79,000 in the same period of 2011.

The vast bulk of those sales — 106,207 — were hybrids, of course.

The hybrid sales included not only much higher sales of the Toyota Prius, now a lineup of three models plus a plug-in, but also Buicks and Chevrolets fitted with the General Motors eAssist mild-hybrid system.

All varieties of plug-in cars accounted for 7,250, according to data compiled by industry trade journal Automotive News.

Plug-in sales totaled about 17,000 units for all of 2011, the bulk of them either the Nissan Leaf battery-electric vehicle or the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car.

For 2012, the strong new plug-in entrant is the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid, whose April sales beat those of both the Volt and the Leaf.

Analysts expect perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 plug-in cars to be sold in the U.S. during calendar 2012, against perhaps 400,000-plus conventional hybrids.

As always, the bulk of the hybrid sales will come from Toyota.

This article originally appeared on Green Car Reports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners. Image via Green Car Reports.

Toyota announces that it has sold 3 million hybrid vehicles. The car company has 18 hybrid models, which use a mix of conventional fuel and electric power to increase fuel efficiency. It first launched its hallmark electric car, the Prius, in 1997. The company is on track to sell 1 million hybrid vehicles each year.

Progress Energy will drop $500 million into developing smart power grids in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. The grids in Florida and the Carolinas will provide electricity to around 3.1 million customers. Progress Energy will use IBM’s WebSphere software to manage its smart grids — electricity grids that are more efficient operationally and can save power and money. The last smart grid program IBM piloted shaved 15 percent off typical power consumption in North Carolina.

BP buys majority stake in Brazilian biofuels developer for $680 million. The company paid for an 83 percent stake in the Brazilian ethanol manufacturer. It is the largest deal in BP’s alternative energies unit to date. BP has tried to diversify into biofuels over the past several years amid concerns of political unrest in the Middle East, one of the largest suppliers of oil.

Xtreme Power, DTE Energy launch solar power project at Michigan Ford factory. The deal will bring $5.8 million to Xtreme Power, a provider of smart energy storage units. DTE Energy’s installations will generate 500 kilowatts of power, which will be stored in Xtreme Power’s 750-kilowatt storage system — enough to power 100 homes for a year.

Solar panel manufacturer Suntech Power posts strong fourth-quarter earnings. The company made $945 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, up 61.9 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. Shipments of photovoltaic cells, which capture sunlight and convert it to electricity, were up 87.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 when compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Suntech made $2.9 billion in 2010, up 71.4 percent from 2009.

VentureBeat’s top ten video games of the year (vote for your favorite) — Game publishers aren’t thrilled that video game sales are down 5 percent year to date. But for gamers, it’s been an awesome year because 2010 saw the debut of some of the best games ever made.

Google plans to fix broken Android Market with upcoming update — The Android Market on Google’s Android operating system has been broken for some time. This week, Google said it will fix some of the longstanding problems with an update.

Word Lens iPhone app combines instant text translation with augmented reality — Just when you thought you’ve seen everything mobile apps have to offer, along comes an entry like Word Lens that makes you feel like you’re in the future. The app instantly translates Spanish into English (and vice versa) whenever you point your iPhone’s camera on text.

Starting Monday, WikiLeaks will have a rival in Openleaks — Former WikiLeaks members say they plan to start rival Openleaks as part of an effort to compete for official leaks with WikiLeaks.

Record-breaking World of Warcraft Cataclysm sells 3.3M units in its first day out — World of Warcraft Cataclysm broke all PC game records, selling more than 3.3 million copies on its first day of sales on Dec. 7.

And here are five more stories we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:

Ding-ding-ding! Electric cars likely to be required to make noise — The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act suggests that electric cars and hybrids might be a little too quiet.

Google invests in RelayRides to turn your car into a Zipcar — It seems Google is willing to wait a little longer to fulfill CEO Eric Schmidt’s dream of cars that drive themselves.

How GetGlue plans to dominate TV check-ins (and more) — I’ve seen a ton of TV check-in apps in the last few months, so I asked founder and chief executive Alex Iskold how GetGlue will stand out.

Google makes Android Voice Search smarter by learning how you speak — Google is taking a cue from desktop speech recognition software, like the popular Dragon Naturally Speaking program, by bringing personalized voice profiles to Android’s mobile Voice Search app.

Fastest-growing game in history: Zynga’s CityVille hits 26M players in 12 days — Zynga’s CityVille has become the fastest-growing game in history. And based on an interview with a key Zynga executive, that isn’t an accident.

This is the third pillar in Toyota’s robust green technology strategy. Already, Toyota’s Prius is the dominant brand in low-emissions vehicles, giving Toyota  the crediblity it will need to successfully launch the revamped, plug-in version of the Prius in 2012. Both Priuses have built a strong foundation for Toyota to move beyond battery technology to fuel cells.

“We plan to come to market in 2015 or earlier with a vehicle that will be reliable and durable, with exceptional fuel economy and zero emissions at an affordable price,” Toyota head of environmental affairs Irv Miller said during the announcement.

The major automaker started testing fuel-cell technology in 2002 with a fleet of 20 vehicles in California. In the last eight years, it has more than doubled the range of its fuel-cell hybrid vehicles (FCHVs). In late 2007, it took of the models on a seven-day road test between Fairbanks, Alaska and Vancouver, Canada. The cars are said to get 68 miles per gallon of gasoline and have a driving range of 431 miles while emitting zero greenhouse gases.

The one snag in Toyota’s plan? It might be hard to find a hydrogen station to fuel up. The company hopes its program, and those being explored by its competitors, will jump start the development of hydrogen fuel infrastructure. Producing the hydrogen fuel cells themselves isn’t too difficult. It only requires electricity and water. The trick will be to accelerate both car production and infrastructure development at the same right and at the right time to achieve rapid adoption, Toyota says.

In September, Daimler also came out with similar plans to get average consumers behind the wheel of hydrogen fuel cell cars by 2015 (and is looking to partner with Toyota in the endeavor). The big challenge, that company said, will be to make them cost-competitive with other automotive options. It hopes to commercialize a hydrogen version of its compact Mercedes Benz B class, which it unveiled at the auto show in Frankfurt in the fall.

It will be interesting to see how much companies collaborate in order to make a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid a reality. Considering the hurdles ahead — both the steep costs and the need for extensive, perhaps policy-motivated, changes to fuel infrastructure — it seems like even the biggest names in the car industry will be willing to partner so that more can benefit.