Mitsubishi and Toshiba announce battery partnership

Mitsubishi and Toshiba have just announced a new partnership, aimed at developing lithium-ion batteries for vehicles.

Toshiba, a maker of electronic goods, has been making a few inroads into the automotive industry as of late. The most recent piece of news came when the company announced that it would build electric motors for Ford in June.

The company is now in a partnership with Japanese automaker Mitsubishi, according to Bloomberg. Yuki Murata, a spokesperson for Mitsubishi said the automaker has not yet decided if they will actually use the batteries.

The spokesperson also mentioned that if testing goes according to plan, the company will use the batteries. He pointed out that Toshiba has been working on batteries for a year and it will finish up testing before they approach the automaker to create a formal usage agreement.

This new agreement could help Mitsubishi catch Toyota and Honda in the development of electric cars, as the automaker has yet to produce anything that can rival the Prius or the CR-Z.

2012 Mitsubishi Eclipse SE

The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution XI may have been saved from the chopping block, but at least one Mitsubishi sports coupe is on its final dregs and will soon ride off into the sunset. For the record, the Eclipse, has been one of our favorite Japanese sports coupes in recent times so it goes without saying that we’re pretty bummed out that the line will officially end after the 2012 model year.

On that note, Mitsubishi has prepared a new mode of the Eclipse, called the ’Eclipse SE’ to give the car the proper send-off it deserves. Slated to be the last Eclipse model to be built, the Eclipse SE comes with some new details and features to make the last one a pretty memorable one, too.

Make no mistake, it’s a sad time to be a Mitsubishi Eclipse fan, but as the scribes always used to say, “all good things must come to an end”. And if this is the send-off that Mitsubishi is giving to their once-beloved sports coupe, then we expect the car sell like ice cream on a hot summer day.