Hybrids Can Be Cheap to Make, Toyota Says

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-autos-toyota-hybrid.html

Hybrids Can Be Cheap to Make, Toyota Says
By REUTERS Filed at 6:04 a.m. ET

TOYOTA CITY, Japan (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp showed off the production site of its gasoline-electric hybrid cars to journalists for the first time on Thursday with a powerful message: they don't have to be expensive to make.Not long ago, many leading auto makers, including the world's biggest, General Motors Corp, questioned the benefit of developing hybrid cars, arguing they are merely an interim solution before zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles take over.

They accused -- possibly accurately -- Toyota and Honda Motor Co, the only other mass-producer of gas-electric hybrid cars, of selling them at a loss given the labor-intensive assembly required.There may have been some truth to that argument before, but no longer, says Toyota, which launched its second-generation Prius hybrid sedan in Japan last month."We used to build the previous Prius on an exclusive assembly line at the Takaoka plant, and later at Motomachi," said Kenji Takahara, head of administration at neighboring Tsusumi plant, which now builds the Prius."Now, it shares a line with four other mass-production sedans," he said.

That's a big and necessary step for Japan's top auto maker as it aims to offer the hybrid option on most of its models in the not-too-distant future. Toyota is hoping to sell 300,000 of the fuel-efficient vehicles a year starting mid-decade.Hybrids use electric motors and battery packs to improve fuel efficiency, adding power during acceleration and reclaiming energy when braking and coasting. Toyota says the Prius gets 35.5 km per liter of gasoline, which is over 80 miles per gallon.<snip>

Touring through the factory floor in this central Japanese city named after the auto maker, it is indeed difficult to tell there's any difference between a hybrid and a conventional car."The worker is installing the hybrid engine system into the Prius just like a regular gasoline engine," assembly manager Yoshihisa Nagatani says proudly, pointing at the shell of a Prius hanging on an overhead conveyor belt as it follows a Camry.In addition to some tweaking of the assembly line required with any new model launch, mixed assembly has been made possible by the huge increase in projected sales, Toyota says.The auto maker is aiming to sell 76,000 units of the new Prius a year globally, with 36,000 of that in Japan. Actual sales of the previous Prius was 28,000 units last year.But the sales target is already looking extremely conservative. Toyota said on Thursday that orders in Japan reached 17,500 units in the first month. In the United States, where it goes on sale this month, orders topped 10,000 as of September 24.Reflecting their popularity, every other car on the five-model assembly line at the Tsutsumi plant is a Prius.
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... GM and Ford Motor Co are planning to introduce their first hybrid vehicles later this year. But with Ford admitting to doing so at a loss initially, it could be a while before they can emulate Toyota's success.

GMFord are being Betamaxed.

Toyota had planned to produce 36,000 second-generation Priuses for this model year. But combine 17,500 sales in Japan with 10,000+ orders in the United States, and they've already sold three-quarters of their planned build.

And this is a car that went on sale in Japan on September 1st, and doesn't officially go on sale in the United States until October 17th.

in my future.

and I bought one. It is a damn good car and it feels good to only have to fill it up once or twice a month.

him - prototype will be ready by 2020, and a system of hydrogen fill-ups installed nationwide by 2050. And a hydrogen car proves Bush is into saving energy and the environment and national security - just do not think about oil usage between now and your new hydrogen car.

And please - do not think about how in 1993 Clinton/Gore began funding (to Detroit alas - and ended under Bush) for studying high mileage off the shelf technology cars that resulted in the Union of Concerned Scientists (not Detroit) publishing the specs/blue prints for a non-hybrid midsize SUV- that is the same size/weight as the Ford Explorer - uses off the shelf components (cost moves from $30k to $33k- but no new technology) - and gets 36.3 mph with same performance (speed, pulling power, acceleration) as today's Explorer.

Clinton and Gore wanted to waste the people's money and were not helping the environment or national security by reducing need for oil - they were just too stupid to not understand the wisdom of the Bush Hydrogen car!

And the save oil with better cars media stories you have not read in your papers or seen on TV is only because the US Media has been busy showing us Bush in a flight suit on a carrier 15 miles from San Diego, and not showing us the 31 combat dead in Afghanistan defending the city of Kabul as the Taliban/warlords run the Country or the 311 dead in Iraq or the 1700 wounded in Iraq.

IMO.