Toyota scales back hybrid goals

DETROIT — Toyota (TM) is backing off its pledge to hybridize every model by 2012, and instead it says it will develop a broader mix of alternative-energy vehicles.


Making a gas-electric hybrid out of every Toyota model, as the company vowed to do in 2003, may not make sense because it's becoming apparent that different models require different types of fuel-saving technologies, said Jim Lentz, president of Toyota's U.S. sales operation.


Even though the company made the pledge about every model, "There may be a few where it doesn't make logical sense," Lentz said in an interview.
Instead, the company announced more research on plug-in hybrids, diesel engine offerings in its larger vehicles and ethanol research.

Lentz said Toyota is taking a broad approach. "We are covering our bets in all of the alternative energy areas."


While also not pledging to offer hybrids in every model, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe reaffirmed in a speech at the North American International Auto Show the company's goal of selling a million hybrids a year in the next decade. Last year, it sold nearly 250,000 in the U.S.


One environmental activist expressed dismay about Toyota backing off its pledge on hybrids. Electric car advocate Chelsea Sexton of Plug-In America says the company isn't living up to its promises and that she feels a "sense of betrayal." Toyota "has been resting on its hybrid laurels" since introducing the Prius in the U.S. in mid-2000.


But Jim Kliesch, senior analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists' clean vehicles program, says he's not entirely surprised. Although hybrid technology provides promise, there are cheaper, less glitzy ways to achieve improvements in gas mileage. They include high-strength, lightweight materials, and more efficient transmissions.


"It's the boring stuff," he says. "It's cooler to talk about hybrids and fuel cells, but at the end of the day it's the boring stuff that will get the job done."


Jaycie Chitwood, senior strategic planner in the automaker's U.S. advanced technologies unit, said Toyota has constructed prototype plug-in hybrid versions of the Prius that should go seven miles on battery power before the gasoline engine kicks in. Toyota hasn't decided whether to start production on those vehicles. It would be several more years before they could be offered for sale if production gets a green light.


Lentz said that automakers have to keep their promises when it comes to alternative energy. And the company announced a series of alternative energy initiatives.


Toyota announced Sunday that it will offer clean diesel V-8 engines in its Tundra pickups and Sequoia full-size SUVs "sometime soon," Watanabe said. Diesel engines have more torque and get better mileage than hybrids in truck applications.


"We're hedging our bet because diesel is the best solution for a full-size pickup," Lentz said.


Toyota isn't the first automaker to change hybrid plans.


In 2006, Bill Ford, CEO of Ford Motor (F) at the time, backed down from a promise to sell 250,000 hybrid vehicles a year, saying in a letter to employees that the goal was "too narrow to achieve our larger goals of substantially improving fuel economy and CO2 performance." Instead, the company altered its course and varied its focus to include flexible-fuel vehicles. It was the second environmental pledge the automaker backed away from in Ford's tenure. In 2003, the automaker said it wouldn't be able to reach the goal of cutting SUV gas consumption by 25%. It was a goal set just three years earlier.


Toyota had said just two years ago that it would add hybrid versions each time it introduced new versions of each vehicle line. Toyota said at the time it want to push hybrid sales from 3% of its overall volume to 10% by 2012. wanted to push hybrid sales from 3% of its overall volume to 10% by 2012.



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