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LOS ANGELES — While Nissan is roaring full-tilt into the electric vehicle market this year with the Leaf, Toyota is taking a more cautious approach.

Toyota says it will build just 35 RAV4 EVs in cooperation with Tesla Motors for a demonstration fleet. Toyota hopes to have a production version ready in 2012, but declined to give further details.

The RAV4 EV prototype is expected to have a range of about 100 miles. That is the same range as the RAV4 EV Toyota built in the mid-1990s, of which 748 are still on the road.

But the new vehicle’s performance is much better. The RAV4 EV weighs approximately 220 pounds more than the current RAV4 V-6, yet will accelerate from 0 to 60 nearly as fast — in about seven seconds.

Toyota approached development of the RAV4 EV as a midcycle restyling, albeit with the powertrain change. The engineering was done at Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America in Ann Arbor, Mich. Tesla was responsible for building and supplying the battery, as well as other related parts.

Whereas Toyota has relied on nickel-metal hydride batteries for its hybrid vehicles, the RAV4 EV will come with a Tesla lithium-metal oxide battery with usable output rated in the mid-30 kilowatts-per-hour range.

The demonstration fleet will be assembled at Toyota’s plant in Cambridge, Ontario. The Tesla components are made in Palo Alto, Calif. Where they will be installed is still being negotiated. The assembly location for the production model has not been determined.

The RAV4 EV has different front and rear fascias from the standard RAV4 and will get a specific paint color, which has not been announced. The interior will get distinct seat materials and a redesigned instrument panel.

No cargo space was lost to a battery pack, compared with a standard RAV4.

The RAV4 EV is far from the only environmental statement Toyota plants to make. In 2012, it will launch a plug-in version of the Prius, as well as a compact commuter and seven all-new hybrid vehicles to its vehicle fleet.

Regarding Smart’s expanded line and affiliation with Renault-Nissan (“Lineup expansion to take Smart beyond 1 car, 2 seats in 2011,” Oct. 11): You can imagine how I and the many other retailers who made a major commitment to Saturn and General Motors feel about this announcement.

Since Saturn’s inception 20 years ago, nearly 500 facilities were acquired and built to Saturn specs, and we were encouraged to hang on and continue supporting the brand all the way.

Then, when the Penske deal blew up at the table in September 2009, all was lost.

But wait — aren’t these the same product portfolio enhancements that Saturn was supposed to get, or am I missing something?

Meanwhile, we continue to divest ourselves of unwanted facilities and regroup. This should be a wake-up call for many dealers who think they are independent businesspeople.

SHANGHAI (Bloomberg) — General Motors Co. and its Chinese partner, SAIC Motor Corp., plan to cooperate on developing alternative-energy vehicles as the world’s largest auto market aims to reduce its dependence on oil.

GM, China’s largest overseas carmaker, and Shanghai-based SAIC may share technologies for developing electric vehicles and components, the companies said in an e-mailed statement today. They also will increase the role of their engineering and design joint venture, the Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center in Shanghai.

The partners join rivals Nissan Motor Co. and Daimler AG in planning to sell cars powered by lithium-ion batteries. China, the world’s largest oil importer, is offering subsidies to buyers of such vehicles.

The announcement comes as GM aims to raise as much as $10.6 billion in an initial public offering, two people familiar with the plan said Nov. 1. SAIC, which has partnered with GM in China for more than a decade, has said it may participate in the offering.

“As a strategic partner of GM, we hope to see a successful IPO,” Judy Zhu, spokesman for the Chinese automaker, said today. “However, SAIC still needs more details before making a decision.”

Shanghai GM, the automakers’ passenger-car venture, sold about 843,000 vehicles in mainland China during the first 10 months of this year, according to the statement.