Domestic auto sales for Japan's top carmakers continued to slide in June. Toyota alone booked a 25 per cent drop on-year.
Demand overall may still be weak, but the numbers for hybrid vehicles have been encouraging. The new third generation Prius, which Toyota unveiled only in May, is paving the road ahead.
It promises to have more power than previous models. It also boasts of improved fuel efficiency, allowing the car to run up to 38 kilometres on every litre of gasoline. There is also more room compared to its predecessors.
Paul Nolasco, Corporate Communications Department, Toyota Motor, said: "We're beginning to build more hybrid vehicles in many countries outside Japan as well because the vehicles are popular overseas. For example, we're already building hybrid vehicles in the US, China. We started in July to build hybrid vehicles in Thailand. We'll start to do the same in 2010 in Australia and in the UK as well."
Toyota has sold more than 1.3 million Prius vehicles since its launch in 1997. But it is the hybrid version that is helping to push sales in recent months.
22,292 Prius hybrid vehicles were sold in Japan in June, making it the first fuel-sipping hybrid car to outsell all other vehicles. And in July, Toyota launched its very first hybrid for Lexus, its luxury brand. This new model will be introduced to the US market in September.
Nolasco said: "First of all, in the next decade in 2010s, we aim to sell one million hybrid vehicles a year. Further down the road in 2020s, we expect to have hybrid vehicles in every position of our lineup. For every model of our vehicle, we want a hybrid version. We believe hybrid vehicles are the key to the future.
"And our hybrid technology can be applied to not just gasoline and electric, but for example, diesel fuel, diesel and electric or also to electric vehicles themselves. This is a new technology called plug-in vehicle. We can also apply to compress natural gas and other types of alternative fuel, including hydrogen and fuel cell."
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