Green News

A better environment, A better World.

August 22, 2009

Where Toyota is today on pure electrics, plug-in hybrids and the like

Posted by : admin

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Toyota, Green Daily

Toyota Prius PHEV prototype – Click above for high-res image gallery

We’ve heard from people who know that, behind the scenes, Toyota is moving quickly on the path to bring plug-in hybrid vehicles to market. Publicly, though, the company is taking a slow, methodical and sometimes skeptical approach to cars with cords. After all, they just spent years teaching us that we don’t need to plug in the Prius.

The best wrap-up of where the company is today can be found over at HybridCars, where our friend Bradley Berman, the site’s editor, has put together a interview with Doug Coleman, Toyota’s U.S.-based Prius product manager, that looks at where ToMoCo sees its own plug-in technology in comparison with the competition. The short version: Toyota is happy where it is, and will bring plug-ins to market when it deems customer demand is present. Put another way, as Jana Hartline, Toyota’s environmental communication manager, did: “Our outlook has never been to be the first to market. We want to be the best to market.” Read the whole thing.

Gallery: EVS23: PHEV Prius prototype