The official word from Japanese automaker giant; Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), is that their global cumulative sales of hybrid vehicles have topped the 4 million mark as of April 30th 2012.
<!--more-->With environmental issues becoming increasingly apparent, it dawned upon TMC to ensure that they too are taking part in the movement for greener technology to be implemented for the sake of preserving the heritage as well as the future advancements of intelligent bi-pedal mammalians – humans (and all thing big and small of course).
With zero emissions still in their infancy, it still boils down to the need to reduce our overall dependence on ‘black gold’ (Oil). Hence, TMC’s approach to promote mass-market adoption of hybrid vehicles, having launched the highly sought after Prius, launched in December of 1997.
Sales of the Prius began in North America, Europe and elsewhere in 2000. Next came the second-generation Prius in 2003 and the expanded use of TMC's hybrid system on such vehicles as minivans, SUVs, rear-wheel-drive sedans and compact hatchbacks. In particular, the third-generation Prius launched in May 2009 received strong support from customers around the world, leading to global cumulative sales of TMC's hybrid vehicles topping 3 million vehicles by the end of February 2011.
TMC currently sells 18 hybrid passenger vehicle models in approximately 80 countries and regions around the world.
This year, hybrid vehicles have accounted for 15% of TMC's global vehicle sales and with the upcoming "Yaris Hybrid" scheduled for launch in Europe and the Lexus "ES 300h" for the United States, TMC has committed themselves to augmenting its product lineup even further by increasing the number of countries and regions that have access to hybrid vehicles.
As of April 30, 2012, TMC has calculated that their hybrid vehicles have helped reduce approximately 26 million tons of CO2 emissions into our atmosphere since 1997, reducing their impact on Earth’s green house effect.
TMC has now placed their concentration on utilizing hybrid technologies as The key technologies for their future vehicular line-up and they’ve also pledged to further raise the performance of these vehicles (including non-hybrid environmentally friendly vehicles), which helps retain the fun-factor that makes their vehicular creations popular with consumers.
