Toyota Announces Long-Term Plan For 100% Hybrid Fleet - NYT

[hatrack]

FRANKFURT, Sept. 13 (Bloomberg News) - The Toyota Motor Corporation said this week that all its vehicles would eventually be run by hybrid gasoline-electric motors, as record fuel prices curb demand for conventional automobiles. "In the future, the cars you see from Toyota will be 100 percent hybrid," Kazuo Okamoto, executive vice president, told reporters in Frankfurt Monday, without giving a specific timetable.

Toyota, Japan's biggest carmaker and second to General Motors worldwide, is aiming to make as many as 400,000 gasoline-electric vehicles in 2006, including Prius cars, Camry sedans, Highlander sport utility vehicles and Coaster buses, Katsuaki Watanabe, president of Toyota, said at an investor conference in New York Monday. That would be 60 percent more than 2005's objective, he added.

Toyota has sold 425,000 gasoline-electric cars since 1997 and is trying to profit from its lead over General Motors and Ford Motor. Mr. Watanabe said he aimed to cut production costs and halve the $5,000 price premium on such vehicles, without giving details.

"Toyota has been the leader of the pack in environmental technology, and they will probably continue to be," said Norihito Kanai, an analyst at Meiji Dresdner Asset Management in Tokyo. "Many of its rivals were at first not so aggressive in hybrids, but now we see everyone joining."

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/automobiles/14toyota.html

[tives12]

1. :D

Yay, finally.

[Raster]

2. this will be the defining moment in the automotive industry,

and for the most part, American car makers have missed the boat. Yeah, yeah, I know about Ford's two or three models. They use the Toyota hybrid technology, and have had to be dragged to the altar kicking and screaming. No wonder the American car manufacturer's stock is in the shitter. No foresight, no long-term vision.

[European Socialist]

3. This should be the goal of all automakers.

[Strelnikov_]

4. Great, Okamoto-san, Now That You Have Recognized That MPG

is the critical design parameter, not 'performance', how bout some 20 mi. EV range PHEV's.

The CalCar guys have already demonstrated proof of concept. If they can do the retrofit to existing Prius, engineering costs to offer this as an option cannot be that much.

[Kolesar]

5. I still don't get it

1. You buy a vehicle that is going to need a $$$ battery replacement in about eight years, which means that the vehicle is about worth its scrap price at that time. 2. Even if the price premium can be halved to $2500 as Toyota hopes, it is still an expensive vehicle. 3. Will those who drive <5000 miles per year be forced to buy vehicles that are designed for requirements that they don't have?

[phantom power]

6. What does it cost to replace the batteries?

[skids]

9. More important question...

8 years from now, when battery technology has signifigantly progressed, what will the batteries cost?

(Actually it's more like 10-15 years. The batteries are supposed to last for the "life of the car" which Toyota sets at 10 years.)

Note that the standard Prius pack is NiMH. The Calcars plugin battery pack is Lithium based. The former has less environmental impact. In either case, though, when someone goes on and on about the "disposal cost" of a hybrid battery pack it's bull. For laptop batteries and D cells, there are disposal issues. For a battery pack the size of a hybrid car's, you actually get a core refund when you turn them in, because most of what's in them is recyclable and valuable. If disposal of the non-recyclable part was costly, they would not give you a refund.

The Insight, however, has much worse battery load management and may go through packs faster.

There's even an outside chance that by the time you need to replace them, batteries will be so cheap that the materials inside the old battery pack are worth more than the replacement. More critically, though, by the time you need to replace them you'll no longer need to worry about violating your warranty by getting a post-production plug-in system.

[Kolesar]

10. "$3,500 but Toyota hopes the price will come down to $1,000."

According to this message board: http://www.mailarchive.ca/lists/misc.consumers/2004-05/0971.html
But just having the technicians open up your car to work on it is going to cost you a thousand bucks, I am sure. So, you have to spend $2000 to $4500 just to revive a moribund motorcar that would otherwise be worth about $5000.

The alternative is buy a convential drive economy car for $2500 to $5000 less and dispose of it at the 8 year point.

[midnight armadillo]

7. And in other automotive news

GM announces that its recovery plan involves higher sales of light trucks and full size SUVs, made in China.

[phantom power]

8. Before I laugh, I'm going to wait and see if it comes true.