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Toyota to Move to All Hybrid Vehicles By 2012
ftumph writes "Toyota has announced that
all their vehicles will be gas-electric hybrids by 2012. The plan is to eliminate the current $3,000 per vehicle additional cost for hybrid engines through mass production."
I own a Prius, and it actually has quite a bit of power. Not a sportscar, but substantially more power than my other car, a Toyota Echo. The continuous transmission helps. Rides nice, and I get just over 47 MPG.
As an Insight owner, I try to keep up with this stuff. Turns out Toyota has retracted that promise, saying that there was a "misinterpretation" on the Japanese end.
Can't find the link, but here's the WSJ article re: same:
Toyota Still Plans to Sell 300,000 Hybrid Vehicles a Year By 2005
Friday October 25, 5:19 pm ET
By Norihiko Shirouzu, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
DETROIT -- Toyota Motor Corp. reaffirmed it aims to sell a total of 300, 000 super-efficient, electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles a year by 2005.
Toyota's reaffirmation came in response to a news report earlier this week that said the auto maker plans to use hybrid engines in all vehicles by 2012 to increase fuel efficiency and reduce tailpipe emissions. The report also said Toyota won't sell 300,000 hybrids annually until 2007.
Kevin Webber, a Toyota spokesman in Ann Arbor, Mich., said the report was " inaccurate," which he said stemmed from a "misinterpretation" of comments in Japanese made by a Toyota executive.
Mr. Webber said it is "technically infeasible" to use hybrid systems in all vehicles Toyota sells around the world in 10 years. He said Toyota continues to aim to sell 300,000 hybrids a year by about 2005.
Last month, Toyota's president Fujio Cho said the No. 1 Japanese auto maker will expand its lineup of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles into larger vehicles, such as midsized sport-utility vehicles and minivans, as it tries to sell a total of 300,000 hybrids a year by 2005.
Cho said Toyota "will expand hybrid systems into an array of models, including larger vehicles."
Already, Toyota recently has begun selling in Japan a hybrid minivan called the Estima. In the U.S., Toyota currently sells only one hybrid, the small Prius car, while in Japan its lineup includes the Prius and a Crown luxury car equipped with a so-called "mild" hybrid system, in addition to the Estima.
-Norihiko Shirouzu, The Wall Street Journal
the hybrid cars of today require you to change the batteries every 3 yrs and
it costs $6000-7000 to replace them and they are not as powerful now. But maybe
all this will change by 2012.
Where'd you get that information?? Honda is giving an 8-year 80K mile warranty on its Hybrid batteries. Their claim is replacement at around 10 years, and about $1000 at today's prices ($1K price told to me by a Honda dealer), which will probably come down as the first hybrids need their replacements.
Nope, sorry. I'm afraid heavy trucks are not the reason for the need of road upkeep.
Consider all the roads out there where trucks are forbidden, they still need regular maintenance and repairs with about the same regularity as major highways that carry trucks.
The fact is that road denegration is mostly due to weather and environmental changes. The ground settles differently (usually based on nearby development) and cracks appear. Trees grow and their roots crack streets. The temperature changes, the road expands and contracts, and cracks appear. These cracks fill with water and potholes appear. That's just the way it is, and without breakthroughs in paving technology (like tarmac), maintenance costs will still be high.
As for using rail shipments, that's a fine idea, and I believe that about as much tonnage is shipped by rail these days as by trucks. The trouble is that with rail you can seldom get there from here. And too, you have to maintain rail lines (recall the Amtrak crash in Maryland this summer due to overheated poorly mainained track?).
I hate like driving with trucks as much as the next guy, and there's probably a size of truck that ballances environmental, safety, and shipping concerns which has yet to be found; but in the meantime trucks are often the best (if not only) way to efficiently transmit goods.
credo quia absurdum
Being an American, born and true, the part of your post that bothers me the most is the slam that (paraphrase) "Only a TRUE American would buy a piece of shit, gas guzzling, below sub-par performance on the world stage, cheaply made, heavy, highly inefficient engine, fall apart after 100,000 miles, American made car." For example, my fiancee (who is also American pure and true) just purchased a German engineered, German manufactured, and German produced Audi A6 2.8 Quattro. Every American made car is a piece of shit when you own a car as beautifully made and engineered as that vehicle. It makes you laugh or grin every time you see any car engineered in America.
The truth of the matter is not the Americanism of buying a POS American engineered vehicle. It is the American business model...Make the car as cheaply as possible and sell it for as much as possible. And if you can't sell the car on merits, start calling the properly and better engineered vehicles names...Rice burners, Nazi mobiles, etc. etc. I am an engineer with a deep passion for World Rally Sport. Unlike what MOST Americans think, it doesn't take any talent to make a car go fast in a straight line. Sure, your Corvette goes somewhat fast (that is a matter of opinion), but try to corner with it or bring it onto any kind of race or track which isn't an oval, and your Corvette shows just how much of a front heavy, over-rated piece of shit it is.
The only thing that is American about you and your post is the shear ignorance of the American people is shining though. If you understood world class performance, anything short of an AWD (All Wheel Drive), turbocharged (single or twin), 4 cylinder (inline or horizontally opposed), or even 6 cylinder, is simply a complete POS. Your attitude is what leads people to believe that NASCAR is actually a race, much less a sport. NASCAR is simply American white trash soap opera. You put one of those oval running, RWD, POS American vehicles on a real race course and you will see just how fast they get laughed off the face of the Earth.
You have an American V8 or V6 or I4 car that can out accelerate, out corner, and out perform a Subaru WRX, WRX STi or a Mitsubishi Evo IV, V, VI, VII or the rally edition Audi Quattro (for a small example) and I will call you a liar straight to your face. And then laugh as I leave you in the dust. I have personally seen a Subaru WRX race a modified Chevy Camero SS and the Chevy lost. I would have died laughing if that little race involved any real cornering or tracks. Oh, and you can buy the Subaru WRX and Mitsubishi EVO 7 (available in 2003) in the United States. Cadillac tried to race in the French Le Mans 24 Hour and got laughed off the track by the Audi direct injection race car. Cadillac never showed up again. Ford of Europe is the only car company with an American tie that has ever been able to perform on a world circuit rally race course. And the best part is is that the Ford car isn't even American engineered. In order for Ford to compete, they had to buy another countries more competent automotive engineers and put the Ford label on their car. That is hilarious. Then Ford goes and claims it to be a Ford and American, when the only thing American about the car is the Ford label on the hood.
And as far as big trucks go, considering that the world does not revolve around the United States, how in the world does the other 6.1 billion people on the Earth survive without big American trucks? Sure, they are useful...for roughly 1% of the American population. The rest are simply used because it has been determined that large trucks imply roughness, ruggedness, outdoorsness, individuality, superiority, safety, and masculinity. None of the above are true. I have seen plenty of trucks and SUV's tipped on their tops or sides because the driver (where I live in the US) was trying to avoid a deer at about 55/65 MPH (and these were not all Ford Explorers). Not even one car though. So, safety is a total joke. 4WD...right. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, only 1% of the population has ever used their 4WD if they had it. It didn't take a survey to tell me that. I go to work every single day and in our parking lot at work alone I see almost 25 big, American trucks...most of them driven by fat, short, women who smoke who have never really used their trucks in their entire lives. The other ones are used by desk jockey, middle aged men, none of whom live outside of the city (my engineering assistant just purchased a new Chevy Blazer the other week...and she lives 3 blocks from here).
All that your post showed is that apparently the only TRUE Americans are the dumb, uneducated, V8 driving, RWD morons (or FWD morons who try to race me from the stoplights in their Saturns..ha ha ha) that everyone else in the world still laughs at. I am American. I am educated. I look for quality in engineering and I have yet to find any quality, ingenuity, or competent engineering in any American engineered automobiles. But, one thing that makes me sick is that American's pride themselves on being stupid and ignorant and that the world revolves around the US in all aspects. I consider myself more American than you because I can admit my countries faults, admit that other countries and other engineers do things completely better, and still love my country for the things that are good about it, and educate the uneducated in my country (enlightening the V8 driving morons among others). You should be American and educate yourself and stopping thinking the entire world revolves around you and your US-centric attitude (especially about American automotive engineering). It's all about better automotive engineering, which the rest of the world knows that US has the worst. Oh, that new revolutionary GM diesel engine. That's right. It's made my Isuzu. Ooops.