FOR THE RECORD: How Many Hybrids Will We Sell, When Will We Sell Them and in Which Models?

We’re responding today to a couple of stories, including one of our own, that are a little misleading.

The first of the stories to which I’m referring reported that Toyota has promised to sell  a million hybrid vehicles per year by 2010.

The stories that contain this information refer to a presentation by Katsuaki Watanabe, president of Toyota Motor Corp., at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit on Jan. 13. But they’re not exactly correct.

What Mr. Watanabe said, when he was commenting on a pair of new hybrids he said would appear next year, was this: "Our long-stated goal is to begin selling a million hybrids per year sometime during the 2010s."

He was saying that sometime in the coming decade, we anticipate selling a million hybrids a year, not that we anticipate doing so in 2010 or before. As you can see, what’s been reported and what Mr. Watanabe said are two different things.

How easy is it to make this kind of mistake? It’s very easy indeed. In fact, to our very great dismay, Your Faithful Servants here at Open Road made the same mistake. As you will have seen if you’re keeping track, we’ve gone back into our own Watanabe announcement post and corrected it.

While we’re at it, there’s another clarification that needs to be made. It involves whether, and when, every Toyota model will be available as a hybrid.

The Toyota vision is, and always has been, that every one of our model lines eventually will offer Hybrid Synergy Drive as an option. Mr. Watanabe mentioned that during his remarks at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last week. In doing so, he was echoing the remarks, and the vision, of Fujio Cho, his predecessor.

We’ve seen stories recently suggesting that we aim to meet that goal by 2010, or by 2012. But that’s never been our position or our timetable.

Our target for offering Hybrid Synergy Drive in every model line is, and always has been, the 2010s. We’re talking the ’10s decade – in other words, by 2020 at the latest. This is what we’ve always said, and what we’re still saying.

We feel compelled to clarify these points because misinformation, no matter how honestly and unintentionally it is presented, can have an awfully long shelf-life. And misinformation benefits nobody.

~Contributed by Jon F. Thompson, Corporate Communications

Comments

[auto parts mom]

If that can be possibly happen then I would be very glad to see hybrid cars on the way. Besides, future is very very surprising...

[Didier Van den Meersschaut]

I'm very glad to read here that you (Toyota) is intending to pressure the Market further in the coming 12 years in becoming more ecological in building cars. I would appreciate if this Hybrid solution is now first implemented to one of the smaller models (instead of the bigger cars) so that Hybrid becomes available for the less fortunate as well.
By the way, as Hydbrid means electricity usage, have you explored the implementation of solar panels on the rooftop of the car to supply additional electric power? With the new technologies upcoming this should become a possibility for the 2010s as well. Looking forward to such developments.

[Cody Alexander]

IF TOYOTA WANTED NO EMISSIONS AND AND A BETTER CAR FOR THE EARTH WHY O WHY DID THEY GET RID OF THE EV1- RAV4. NO EMISSIONS RUNS ON ELECTRIC. WATCH THE DEATH OF THE ELECTRIC CAR AND YOU'LL SEE