Toyota aims for 1 million hybrids a year in 2011
Toyota is running ahead of schedule with plans to hit the million-a-year mark in hybrid production sometime in 20112009 was a big year for the Toyota. The Japanese giant hit the two-million sales mark for its Toyota- and Lexus-branded hybrid products in September, and the Prius came in at year's end as Japan's best selling car.
The company is finally leveraging the marketing potential generated by the Prius. Late in the year it launched the hybrid-only Sai -- a Toyota-badged vanilla version of what has gone on sale in the US as the Lexus HS250h.
At the Detroit show reveal of the FT-CH (pictured), effectively a junior Prius, execs announced the company's intention to double hybrid output to one million a year in 2011, partly through the introduction of up to ten new hybrid models.
Toyota Motor Corp exec Koei Saga attracted plenty of media attention for the apparent reservations he holds about the pace of EV development. He told a media conference in Detroit to expect a long wait for extended-range EVs with batteries of sufficient power and durability to allow the abandonment of the internal combustion engine.
Mr Saga is managing officer for the company's advanced technology and battery development division, currently working on li-ion battery packs for the Prius PHEV. The New York Times reports he told a press conference that EV technology's limitations restrict it to baby commuter vehicles for city folk. Current technology would only allow for extended range EVs at the expense of battery longevity, with turnover requirements making the cost of replacement batteries effectively unviable.
Getting the cost of batteries down is a critical factor in finding a mass market for EVs. Mr Saga said Toyota is looking to reduce the cost of lithium-ion batteries by more than 50 percent over the next decade. This renders long-range EVs without a plug-in facility a longish-term proposition, he said.
One possible way around this, he added, was through an on-the-go charging system of the kind being investigated at the moment by the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology of Korea. The system recharges batteries through induction strips and inverters embedded in the road -- something that's bound to give rise to a cancer scare or two.
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