Toyota had ambitious plans for the eQ, its all-electric mini car, but they are now scaling these back. The company has also divulged that they have scrapped plans to push ahead with the development of a second all-electric vehicle.

Takeshis Uchiyamada, Toyota’s vice chairman announced that the company envisages a number of obstacles when it comes to developing electric cars. The market is rather limited, and electric vehicles just aren’t meeting the needs of consumers. Charge times, cost and the distance the cars can run are just some of the issues that turn people off to electric cars.

The Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt and other extended range electric cars have come under criticism. Uchiyamada is not playing to the oil industry. In fact, he was the main driving force behind the development of the 1990’s Prius hybrid. If he says that the world isn’t ready for electric cars, he can do so from a position authority.

One of Toyota’s strengths lies in producing petrol-electric hybrids, and the Prius has demonstrated the company’s success in this field. The company aims to have developed a further 21 hybrid models, with two thirds of them being new models, by 2015.

It’s also interesting to note that Toyota is even cooling off its plans in regarding the hybrid market. Sales figures of less than 9,000 plug-in hybrids sold in Japan this year, fell well short of the company’s original sales target of 35,000 for 2012.

GM and Nissan are already heavily invested in the development of electric vehicles and are highly unlikely to go the same route as Toyota. Between them they are said to have invested around $1.2 Billion to date, and they expect that the development of the LEAF and Volt to pay off in the long term, despite low sales figures so far.