Toyota's Hybrid Strategy

NYT reviews The Hybrid Emperor's New Clothes. See also Toyota Develops Hybrids With an Eye on the Future.

The company expects that a quarter of its sales in the United States will use the technology by then as it tries to sell one million hybrid vehicles a year worldwide. That would put it far ahead of projections for hybrid sales across the industry.

"At our current rate of sales, that's about 600,000 hybrids in the U.S.," said Jim Press, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales USA, in comments at a conference in northern Michigan. "To achieve that goal, we will have to look at offering hybrid power systems in virtually all of our vehicles, including trucks."

Mr. Press dismissed concerns by some consumers and reviewers that Toyota and Honda were using the technology to increase horsepower in newer hybrid models, eroding fuel economy benefits. And he said that the proliferation of technology in modern cars had led to what he called an epidemic of recalls.

Check out the discussion on Toyota Hybrid Math at the GreenCarCongress.