Toyota to introduce plug-in hybrid for 2010, hybrid versions of all cars by 2029

Toyota continues to lead the silent race to efficient cars with plans to introduce a plug-in hybrid in 2010 that will use lithium-ion batteries. Meanwhile, Toyota has been working with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co to develop batteries that will outperform lithium-ion batteries for its plans to introduce hybrid versions of every single car in its lineup between 2020 and 2029. If that seems too far away, the next generation Prius, due next year, will use NiMH batteries. Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters in Tokyo that it's time to move past oil and get serious about electric power. "Our view is that oil production will peak in the near future. We need to develop power train(s) for alternative energy sources."

[Bravo @ Jun 11th 2008 11:04PM]

Too bad the world is going to end in 2012.

[Jimmy @ Jun 11th 2008 11:08PM]

Only if the hadron collider doesn't get us first ;)

[Nolan @ Jun 11th 2008 11:13PM]

December 21 :)

[Flashpoint @ Jun 11th 2008 11:58PM]

The way I see it, if Blind people don't evolve better hearing...these cars should be allowed to do their natural duty of removing the blind from the gene pool.

...and their dogs.

[JohnTitor @ Jun 12th 2008 12:06AM]

eh, solar powered cars will probably become popular when we have two suns in 2010

[ddub @ Jun 12th 2008 2:04AM]

I'm not sure if blindness is a genetic trait.

[Shinigami @ Jun 12th 2008 6:11AM]

Well actually Toyota is going to offer Hybrids at the same time when Russia is expected to run out of Oil, meaning

Great timing! xD

[wirenut262 @ Aug 18th 2008 8:10PM]

Why , is it because the Mayans stopped their calander at 2012. Do you know why? Its because they ran out of Ink-as.

[brian @ Jun 11th 2008 11:05PM]

How right they most likely are.

How unfortunate for car-lovers it really is.

[Ayman @ Jun 12th 2008 12:26AM]

WHAT NO FLYING CARS IN THE FUTURE?

[Jimmy @ Jun 11th 2008 11:06PM]

I think those deadlines might be too far off to be viable, seeing as by then the price of gas will be to much even at 70mpg. If we have to wait until 2029, we might as well start on solar/hydrogen hybrids now and stop wasting our time with gas. I mean, i just payed 4.29/gal yesterday. Three years ago i would have been upset at $2.29. In three years am I going to be complaining about 6.29? I say just work as fast/hard as possible on ditching gas altogether. I am not an environmentalist, I am purely looking at this from an economic standpoint.

[Tony @ Jun 11th 2008 11:15PM]

Yesterday you were upset you paid $4.29/gal for gas.

Today I am upset I paid $4.99/gal for gas in San Francisco.

[Killer @ Jun 11th 2008 11:20PM]

Ditching gasoline altogether, no. Economically that isn't a smart move, because then the other source we choose to use will skyrocket in price. A mixture use of Gasline, Electric, Hydrogen, etc (evenly distributed and used ofcourse) is the only way to end the high demand for sources of energy. It adds more areas to distribute demand and it increase competition, which in turn can equal lower prices for energy sources and gives the consumer a choice for once.

[Nolan @ Jun 11th 2008 11:22PM]

At least Toyota hasn't taken the route of Flex-Fuel cars.
A. E-85 has just the same amount of Co2 emissions as gasoline.
B. Cars on E-85 get 11-13 mpg average.
C. It takes over 1 1/2 gallons if e85 to equal 1 gallon of gas.
D. It takes 22 pounds of corn to make just 1 gallon of ethanol!
E. The US demands 378 million gallons of ethanol per day! Consuming 1.7
million acres of corn a day. This will dramatically increase the price
of corn and the fuel to convert it. IT JUST ISN'T WORTH IT!

[Artie Lange @ Jun 11th 2008 11:23PM]

Hydrogen cars are a decades-old red haring dangled by the car industry so that it could appear to be developing alternative drive trains. They will NEVER be practical, and the car and oil industries know this. First, their cost - despite decades of development - remain prohibitively expensive. Second - and more importantly - they would require major infrastructure investment. Entire nations worth of fueling stations would have to be built to allow for wide-scale adoption of the technology. Who's going to pay for this conversion? Not the oil companies; why would they assist in the costly development of their own obsolescence? Further, in industrialized, free-market economies, governments would be unwilling to invest the necessary funds to build a nation-wide hydrogen delivery system. The only real alternative to fossil-fueled vehicles are EV/hybrids. The technology is starting to verge on the affordable (certainly much more so than any hydrogen system), and they require no new investment in infrastructure. Though they will necessitate investment in electricity generation, that would need to happen anyway as we move away from coal and try to meet increasing population trends.

[Anthony @ Jun 11th 2008 11:52PM]

Oh, Jimmy- I don't recommend going to Europe any time soon.

$7 per gallon is norm, diesel can go for nearly $10 in some parts.

Alternative fuels for automobiles is not the answers. Alternatives to automobiles are.

[CraigJ @ Jun 11th 2008 11:56PM]

Nolan, what you say is factual, but then we've always known that corn was a bad idea pushed by agra-business concerns. There are some potentially viable biofuels, primarily algae. The numbers in the lab indicate that utilizing the CO2 and Nitrates (or is it nitrites?) emissions from fossil fuel fired power plants in bio reactors can yield up to 20,000 gallons of fuel per acre per year, which is much more feasible. Algae is very high in lipids, and starch, meaning you can extract the oil to make diesel, then ferment the starch to make ethanol, and then feed the leftover protein to cattle, or stuff it back in the power plant to burn.

Now, this process relies on fossil fuels, but it means that you get to use the carbon twice, ultimately greatly reducing the amount of emissions. As a bridge technology to tide us over until other cleaner forms become available, and battery technology gets to the point that you can charge quickly and travel long distances reliably, I think it worth pursuing.

[Jimmy @ Jun 12th 2008 12:08AM]

@ Anthony: I was born in Croatia. I have spent every summer of my life there (yes including the war). I am actually going back in 8 days :) I am used to the prices, but one must also take into account that people drive less often, less distance, and drive smaller, more efficient cars. I know this is general, but my friends there have no problem with gas prices for their motor scooters and FIATs. Americans (i'll include myself here as well) do have a problem when we cant fill up our excursions and dual-tank pickups on one credit card charge. Just watch as that $7 dollars becomes $10 as our economy slips.

[dervheid @ Jun 12th 2008 3:26AM]

Stop whinging about the price of 'Gas' in the US. You've been mollycoddled on fuel prices for far too long. $5 a gallon, dirt cheap. Here in the UK, road fuel prices are already beyond the eqivalent of $10 a gallon for 'gas' (aka petrol), and approaching $12 for diesel. Get rid of all your bloody 'gas guzzlers' and stop being so fucking greedy for oil!

BTW. Flame away!

[Tony @ Jun 12th 2008 3:37AM]

@ dervheid

Your gas is more expensive because it is heavily taxed.

Europeans pay about $1-$4 of tax per gallon, compared to about 14 to 50 cents here in the US. In that sense, we pay the same amount for gasoline as you.

So stop your flaming.

[Sean O @ Jun 12th 2008 4:00AM]

Peak oil has been reached. So while demand rises, supply stays the same. Commodities traders are in collusion with the oil companies who are gaming the system. The oil industry is trying to maximize the $$$ they get per barrel because supply is not increasing.


There aren't enough refineries. The reason is because new refineries must meet more strict environmental standards. So it's more profitable to rely on the old ones where the regulations do not apply. Idiots can blame this on environmentalists. I blame it on the idiots. If the regulations were applied to old refineries as well as new, we wouldn't have this problem.

Drilling in Alaska could give us an extra million barrels a day for a few years. The US alone consumes well over 20 million a day. So drilling in Alaska is going to help tremendously (/sarcasm).

The problem won't get better till it gets worse. Democrats want to increase fuel taxes directly on companies to subsidize alternative energy infrastructure (and promote the free market in investing in it). They want to offset your loss with income tax relief. So don't bitch and whine when they do it. Or else we're all screwed.

[Galley @ Jun 12th 2008 8:27AM]

It wasn't that long ago that I paid as little as 68 cents for a gallon of gas. A fill-up was $10. That was '99 or so. Good times!
If I had a plug-in hybrid I could probably go six months without filling up!

[Mikey @ Jun 12th 2008 9:15AM]

Jimmy, one problem with your logic is much of the research going into gas/electric hybrids and plug-in hybrids is directly relevant to solar and hydrogen/hybrids (i.e. converting energy in some form, particularly electricity, to drive train power). So it makes complete sense to continue to research and develop gas/electric hybrids. Plus, it is going to take a huge infrastructure investment to support those "future" technologies (particularly for hydrogen), while the gasoline infrastructure is already there.

I agree that there needs to be research in alternatives to gasoline, but to completely abandon research in gas/electric hybrids just when they are starting to "pay off" is ridiculous.

[MBS @ Jun 12th 2008 10:43AM]

The thing is, the gas prices we're paying today in the US has little to nothing to do with actual supply and demand and everything to do with deregulation of the energy market.

The same legislature that allowed (mainly) Enron to a$$-rape California on electricity a few years back is now allowing the same thing to happen to oil, natural gas, and other commodities (food even, I am sure you have all heard of the rice "shortage"). Basically the entire notion of a "shortage" has been entirely fabricated by commodity futures traders to bring the prices up.

http://www.star-telegram.com/ed_wallace/story/651928.html
and
http://www.star-telegram.com/ed_wallace/story/659081.html

[Jimmy @ Jun 12th 2008 10:57AM]

@ MBS: I agree 100%.
@ Nolan: I agree 100%
@ Artie Lange: You are wrong.

That is all.

[Jeebus @ Jun 12th 2008 12:51PM]

http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/eia_opec_reserves.png
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&sid=aBUoYKhu7PWk

Not less oil, more oil. Oil prices the next 10 years will tumble to new lows.

[Reality Check @ Jun 11th 2008 11:09PM]

"Our view is that oil production will peak in the near future. We need to develop power train(s) for alternative energy sources."

This doesn't solve the problem, it just changes the nature of the problem. Instead of relying on oil, we will be trying to shift our energy production paradigm to significantly higher output using non-coal power generation methods such as nuclear (the best new option).

Now who wants a nuclear power plant in their neighborhood? Don't all sign up at once now!

[Artie Lange @ Jun 11th 2008 11:30PM]

No one WANTS a nuclear power plant in their back yard, but nor do they want a coal plant or any other type of heavy industry either. The times necessitate it, and we will have to get use to it. There is no other alternative at this time, and it is far more desirable than any other option. The reality is that modern nuclear power is safe and much cleaner than any other alternative of a similar output. The French generate 75% of the electricity from nuclear power with little to no incident.

[CraigJ @ Jun 11th 2008 11:59PM]

"No one WANTS a nuclear power plant in their back yard" You can put all the pebble bed type reactors in my back yard you want to. What I don't want in my back yard is a rickover style core submerged in water subject to leaks type retractor.

[LJKelley @ Jun 12th 2008 12:04AM]

I'm not scared of an incident. The questions is what to do with the waste? Its not clean and its not safe. And we STILL don't know how long it will exist in this unsafe form because oddly enough we don't live thousands of years.

I can see the next 'global' potential catostrophe happening by all that radioactive waste seeping into our planet. Its no wonder the amount of Cancer caused by strange chemicals and radioactive technology.

Hydrogen exists naturally in our air. That and mandating all new houses in certain regions have solar roofs...

[Ignatius @ Jun 12th 2008 12:05AM]

I'll take a nuclear power plant in my backyard as long as it's well maintained and operated.

That's the only two things that are needed to keep a plant safe and productive.

[ddub @ Jun 12th 2008 2:13AM]

I used to have a nuclear power plant in my backyard. It wasn't something that worried me. I think I should be more afraid to cross a street

[ECG @ Jun 11th 2008 11:13PM]

I hate when far away dates are set. It makes me realize how old I'll be.

[s i d @ Jun 11th 2008 11:17PM]

how serious are they 'bout wat powers their factories - batteries is it ???

[catachip @ Jun 11th 2008 11:20PM]

2020!? Come on... why should it take 12 years.

And to those American's complaining about $4.05 gas... it's the equivalent of $5.50/gallon in Vancouver, British Columbia, so, no complaining. Europe 's gas prices are not really a fair comparison given that they are not oil producers like Canada is. How Canada can be the largest single country provider of oil to the U.S. and still have far more expensive gas baffles me.

[Anthony @ Jun 11th 2008 11:37PM]

Taxes.

[computer.dude.28 @ Jun 11th 2008 11:41PM]

Ah, there is a certain pleasure in not being old enough to drive a car, therefore no need to pay gas. I do drive a snowmobile though, and you can guess how fuel efficient those are, but my parents pay the gas bill :D
I gotta enjoy this while it lasts.

-Northern Ontario

[ratnikh @ Jun 12th 2008 1:06AM]

@computer.dude.28,
Great, you can enjoy your smug ass off when your parents start making you walk everywhere and have to start buying 1/3rd less food. The rapidly escalating price of gas is creating drastic ripple effects in the cost of utilities, services and groceries.

Already some small privately-owned gas stations are being forced to shut down because they can't afford delivery surcharges and the weekly cost of a fill-up of their in-ground tanks. As the price of gas skyrockets the profit margin for small businesses gets even smaller.

While it may plateau within the next few months, if it doesn't you can also expect to see business move toward a workweek of four 10-hour days, and public schools restricting busing to students more than 6 miles out (but still having to pay a fee, as some already do). I can just imagine this generation of American kids wailing injustice when they are required to actually *WALK* farther than thirty feet! Maybe it'll be the ultimate solution to a disgusting generation of morbidly obese American children (when they have massive coronaries on their way to school).

Air travel nationwide is also being hit hard, as many midsized (and even major) airlines are finding that the fuel required to fly a jet a full capacity (passengers, luggage and fuel) costs nearly as much as the astronomical ticket prices. The solution: sell half the seats and raise prices 50 to 75% to make up the difference. Business forecasts from the airlines themselves estimate several dozen municipal airports shutdown entirely within a year ot two, creating a loss of billions of dollars to small business, and affecting parcel transport, product delivery and supply chains.

So, enjoy your smug little ass off, douchebag. You'll be feeling it soon enough.

[ddub @ Jun 12th 2008 2:17AM]

@ratnikh

Your pretty much right, but I think your being pretty harsh on the kid. I mean, douchebag? Who's the real douchbag?

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 11th 2008 11:23PM]

Toyota said cars available for commercial use in 2010. You won't be able to buy one until 2012.

And 2029? For reals? That's about 1% different from never.

[Killer @ Jun 11th 2008 11:32PM]

As I am and avid visitor of Manitoba every year. This is just some things I have learned on the subject of why gasoline is more expensive. Alot of the pain at the pump in Canada is related to the taxes the Canadian government imposed on it back when Canada still used the Standard system of messurement (Gallons). When the Canadian government switched to the metric system in 1971. They keep the tax on gas the same as it was for a gallon. There for you're paying tax on each liter of gasoline you buy as you would when it used to be a gallon. 1 Gallon = around 3.765 liters. So you're paying nearly 4 times the tax as you would if they had kept it using the gallon. It's sad really, I wish they would have adjusted the tax to fix that, because I do find it to be very unfair.

[Killer @ Jun 11th 2008 11:33PM]

As that was suppose to be a reply to catachip. Thanks reply system!

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 11th 2008 11:44PM]

Canada used imperial gallons.

1 imperial gallon is 4.545 liters.

I'm not sure I really believe your story though.

[Killer @ Jun 12th 2008 7:02AM]

Well seeing that catachip paid around $5.50 for a gallon. 1/3 of that is actually tax. Both (depending on the) Province and GST. Without that tax the price of fuel converted into gallons would be $3.685.

For example: Vancouver is rufflly paying 36.3 cents of tax on every liter of fuel they buy. Catachip paid around $1.46 a liter. That's a significant amount of tax. $1.097 a liter = to about $4.13 a gallon. Oh and I can't forget the 2.4 cent carbon tax in BC either. The canadian government is taxing the hell out of fuel. If you don't believe me just look at their revenues.

-The Government of Canada raises about $5 billion per year from excise taxes on fuel, consisting of about $4 billion from gasoline excise taxes and about $1 billion from diesel and aviation fuel.

-Collectively, the provinces and territories raise about $8 billion per year from excise taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel.

-For 2005, GST revenues from gasoline and diesel fuel, net of input tax credits, are estimated at about $1.6 billion.

[Ethan @ Jun 11th 2008 11:46PM]

I have faith in Toyota to pull it off, but I'm gonna wait to see proof on this one.

[Mark @ Jun 12th 2008 12:07AM]

These are fucking 'lease only'. It's dead on arrival if they won't let people buy the cars.

Give me an option to buy, and I will. Don't give me the option to buy, and I keep my money.

[Silverfrog @ Jun 12th 2008 10:58AM]

Lease only?! Nope.

Check out the sales numbers of the Prius for the last few years. IT'S SOLD OUT almost everywhere you go. Many dealers mark them up above MSRP. That's a cash-cow that the big 'T' isn't likely to pass on. Like the Honda Asimo and other projects, the previous "lease-only" vehicles were simply to prove to the public that it could be done. They hadn't re-tooled their plants for mass-scale production for electrics and hybrids, which costs Billions of dollars to do by the way. Fast forward almost 10 years later and now we have a new way of thinking, new plants popping up and soon-to-be happy customers.

[john @ Jun 12th 2008 12:19AM]

What the hell!?

Why do I have to wait til 2010 to have a plugin hybrid!? This isn't NEW technology, Chile has had plugin hybrids for years (I think 20 years). Heck, they've got flex-fuel plugin hybrids (whether flexfuel is great or not, it spreads the resource consumption out).

On top of that, there's already companies that are selling mod kits for the prius NOW that allow you to plug it in.

Toyota, if you can't release this in 2009, you're a bunch of fucking retards! It's a disgrace that you haven't released it already. Get off your asses and make it happen already!

[jake @ Jun 12th 2008 2:22PM]

Common sense dictates that Toyota is still primarily trying to sell hybrids. They set a target of 2029 for hybrid versions of all cars. I would like to think we won't even have to drive hybrids by 2029. If they come out w/ the plug-in hybrid earlier, what if everyone wants a plug-in hybrid and says screw it to the hybrid? (Which can be a possibility b/c w/ a plug-in you can use absolutely NO gasoline depending on how far you need to drive, and prices of electricity all around the world is the equivalent of around $1/gal on average, even cheaper if you charge at night and your power company offers cheaper off-peak prices).

Just like how Toyota doesn't have the capacity and supply of batteries to make enough Priuses right now, they probably don't have enough batteries for the a large number of plug-ins yet. They don't want to impact the demand for their normal hybrids, which is still going strong. That is why the target is 2010, b/c that's when GM is targeting to release their Volt plug-in hybrid. It's just to keep GM from taking the plug-in crown, but it doesn't sound like a very serious bid into making consumer ready plug-ins. Heck, GM sounds a lot more serious about the Volt than Toyota is about their PHEV Prius. Remember, Toyota is out to make profits, not to save the world as they would like people to think.

[KyleC @ Jun 12th 2008 12:20AM]

excellent news, toyota is moving us forward while the rest of the world sits back chugging gas