Toyota has sold 100,000+ hybrids in Europe
Take all Toyota and Lexus sales in Europe since 2000, figure out which of those vehicles were hybrids and you'll get a number larger than 101,235. That's how many Toyota has sold as of the end of July. If Toyota ever wondered if hybrids were a good idea in diesel-friendly Europe, these sales - and the fact that Toyota sold more than 50,000 hybrids in the last 13 months - must be making the decision easier to justify. As in America, the Prius is the runaway best-seller, with more than 73,000 sold in Europe. Thierry Dombreval, executive vice-president of Toyota Motor Europe, now calls the gas-electric hybrid powertrain "a mainstream technology for Europe." Let's get that next-gen Prius out already.
[Source: Toyota]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rgseidl 12:35PM (9/01/2007)
For reference: total new LDV registrations in the EU27 + EFTA (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein) are running at ~16.8 million per year. The number has been falling for four years running, in part because of Western Europe's population is shrinking. Eastern Europeans are making up some of the shortfall in unit volume, but obviously many cannot yet afford the more luxurious models.
That means Toyota's Prius at ~50,000 units per year has captured 0.3% of the total market. That's noteworthy but it hardly makes electric hybrid technology "mainstream" compared to ~8.5 million diesels.
Besides, if you want to nitpick, any engine equipped with a turbocharger - including virtually every diesel sold - is technically a hybrid, just not an *electric* hybrid. After all, a TC is merely a very small single-stage gas turbine with pneumatic power delivery.
Now, I can appreciate the ingenuity of an electric hybrid as much as the next person and, I commend Toyota for persevering with the technology through a lot of scepticism. That, however, is no reason for ABG to turn into an uncritical ToMoCo shill.
http://www.acea.be/statistics
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