A new version of the Eliica car was developed by researchers at Tokyo's Keio University in cooperation with a government science promotion body and private-sector companies such as Japan's top tyre maker Bridgestone.

The car boasts unprecedented acceleration, taking just 4.2 seconds to go from zero to 100 kilometres per hour and seven seconds to reach 160 kilometres per hour, according to developers.

The car's maximum speed is 370 kilometres per hour, the world's fastest for an electric sedan, excluding vehicles with aircraft-like wings or special racing models, they said.

It runs on lithium-ion batteries and costs one yen to travel one kilometre, they said at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opened for the press at a convention centre east of the capital this week.

The Eliica has already begun public road tests. The developers plan to produce the car in small numbers initially.

"We will initially target the wealthy clientele usually using chauffeured cars as well as rich company owners for their private use," said Hiroichi Yoshida, Keio professor for media and governance in the Eliica project.

"We are talking about something like watches -- a machine combining motors and batteries. As its price can fall quickly in the future, we think it's important to establish a superb brand image first," he told AFP.

Yoshida said the car would be a good sell even at the initial price tag of 30 million yen (260,000 dollars) as some 100 people have already told him they were willing to pay that much if it is launched.

There are several years to go before the car is marketed.

"When I started developing an electric car 25 years ago, I said I expected to launch it in about five years' time. Twenty-five years later, I would not say in five years but it may be in four years," said Keio engineering professor Hiroshi Shimizu said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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