Becoming more planet-friendly by 2010 by boosting its output of environmental technologies.
Parmy Olson - Forbes - June 13, 2006
London - "Moving Forward": How do you quadruple your sales of hybrid cars? Toyota Motor's answer is to double your number of models. One way or another, the math should work out by the early 2010s, when the Japanese car giant hopes to be selling 1 million of its hybrid autos, as opposed to the 235,000 units it has sold today.
In a statement today the car giant, which is on course to overtake General Motors as the world's biggest automaker, laid out its plan for becoming more planet-friendly by 2010 by boosting its output of environmental technologies. That included revamping its entire gasoline engine and transmission lineup with a new type of V6 engine developed in 2003, making hybrid vehicles more widespread, and diversifying its range of energy sources.
Toyota's roster of hybrid models, which include the voguish Prius, Camry Hybrid and Highlander Hybrid, will be multiplied two-fold from seven to 14. "We will lead the global market by regarding hybrids as the core technology to solve the environment issue," Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe was quoted by XFN Asia as saying to a news conference. Last year, Watanabe announced that Toyota was aiming to lower the price of its hybrid vehicles so that "more people can afford them".
In the spring of 2007 Toyota will also be getting busy in a country where bioethanol fuel is already widely used: Brazil. There it will be releasing flex-fuel vehicles, or cars that can run on fuels mixed at any ratio of gasoline and ethanol.
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