I believe nobody is any stranger to Toyota, rightly or wrongly, can be is widely considered the greenest automaker. For automotive news, the company hopes to solidify its hold on the title and move beyond oil through a series of plans to produce cleaner, more efficient cars beginning with a plug-in hybrid which we can see rolling on our streets by 2010. Well so now goes my plans for a plug-on Smart Fortwo.
“Without focusing on measures to address global warming and energy issues, there can be no future for our auto business,” Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters in Tokyo, adding, “Our view is that oil production will peak in the near future. We need to develop power trains for alternative energy sources.”
Sometimes old habits are quite hard to kick- That’s not to say the oil wells will run dry anytime soon or the bulk of Toyota’s cars won’t rely upon internal combustion for many years to come. “People often ask us whether the vehicles of the future will be hybrid vehicles or clean diesel cars or electric vehicles,” Watanabe said. “Our answer is that it will not be one technology because energy situations vary from one market to another.” So don’t expect to drive pass laughing at people at the pumps for now…
On the forefront into developing better and more efficient hybrid technology, Toyota is joining longtime battery partner Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. in launching a program to develop batteries it says will outperform lithium-ion batteries. With these plans ahead, Toyota will introduce hybrid versions of every car in its line-up, in other words, having hybrid as a standard component in all Toyota vehicles, private commercial etc. We will only see that sometime between 2020 and 2029 as it is being progressively introduced.
