Toyota Launches All-out Sales Offensive for Hybrids

   Having launched the Prius way back in 1997, Toyota Motor Corp. is girding for an all-out global sales offensive for hybrid cars. The company sold 200,000 hybrids around the world in 2005, and aims to raise that figure to 1 million by 2008.

   Against a background of sharply rising oil prices, these energy-saving vehicles are rapidly gaining popularity worldwide. They have also shown remarkable improvements in performance. The catch has been cost. Now Toyota intends to bring the price of hybrids in line with that of ordinary cars by drastically pruning parts costs, prior to launching the sales offensive.
   Fuel cells were once viewed as the killer technology for energy-saving cars, but development schedules seem likely to be delayed considerably. Hybrid cars came to be seen as a stopgap, and Toyota, which pioneered hybrid production, still cannot keep up with demand for them. What pushes up their price tags, and curbs their mass appeal, is per-unit motor, battery and parts manufacturing costs that run from 350,000 yen to 400,000 yen in total. By hacking these expenses by two-thirds down to around 80,000 yen over the next three years, so that a finished hybrid costs little more than an ordinary car, Toyota expects to create an overnight mass market.

Prius is the first hybrid car in the world developed by Toyota Motor Corp.

   Hybrids run on electricity and gasoline, using electric motors for low speeds and gasoline for high speeds. The system launched in 1997 was mounted later on its Estima, Crown and Alfard models, and will soon be used in the luxury Lexus model. Localized production has also begun in the United States and China.
   Toyota's sales target for hybrids for 2006 is about 400,000 units. The bottleneck so far has been getting parts supplied in time. Key parts are produced at Toyota's own plants, but the company is now considering entrusting the work to Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd. and other affiliates.
   Toyota has said in the past that it aimed to achieve annual worldwide sales of 1 million hybrids as early as the 2010s. By increasing the number of models and expanding marketing geographically, it seems set to beat this target easily.