Looks like its Frankfurt all over again at Tokyo with every car maker with a hybrid variant of their existing cars. This time around it’s our beloved Swift which is under the shock. Besides its obvious drive train changes it get a crapy exterior paint job (remember the honey comb paint job on Hyundai’s blue concepts at Frankfurt?) and a few street mod like changes to the head light cluster.
As it’s a hybrid, it has a small conventional engine, an electric motor and lithium-ion batteries and since it’s a Plug-in Hybrid, the lithium-ion batteries can be charged from a house-hold power socket. The batteries run the motor and in turn the car. This is in case of a short trip, but if you run out of charge in the battery, that’s when the gasoline engine kicks in. the engine runs a generator and this provides charge to the battery. So in the Swift Plug-in hybrid the engine never runs the car directly. This is similar to the power train of GM’s Chevrolet Volt.
The other changes to the car include a new set of alloys, a set of what appears to be light weight seats with netted holes and a rather good looking refurbished interior.
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