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Toyota says Prius to be built in China

Toyota Motor Corp, the world's second-biggest automaker and pioneer of environment-friendly cars, said yesterday it would start its first overseas production of hybrid vehicles this year in China.

Toyota will start building the Prius hybrid passenger vehicle by the end of this year at a plant run by Sichuan FAW Toyota Motor, a joint venture with China's FAW Group, in the northeast Chinese city of Changchun.

"Toyota regards China as one of its most important markets," Toyota executive vice-president Yoshimi Inaba said in a statement.

"I hope that this project can help contribute, if even in a small way, to the expansion of economic development in Changchun and its region and to the solution of environmental issues in China," he said.

China is the world's second biggest producer of greenhouse gases and is expected to surpass the US as the biggest within 10 years.

Toyota was the first automaker to introduce a hybrid vehicle powered by a combination of gasoline and electricity. It said on Wednesday it was working on 10 new hybrid vehicles after seeing its sales rocket among eco-conscious customers in the US.

Jim Press, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, said the car maker aims by early in the next decade to sell a million hybrid vehicles a year globally.

Of that total, 600,000 would be sold in the US.

"To us, it's not a passing phase, but a vital technology for the 21st century," Press said at the annual Center for Automotive Research conference in Traverse City, Michigan.

Hybrid sales in the US are expected to surge to 1.2 million units by 2008, according to research by Oak Ridge Labs.

"People are buying hybrids for good reasons beyond fuel economy," Press said.

To meet its sales target, Toyota will have to add hybrid engines across its vehicle fleet, including trucks.

The automaker launched a luxury hybrid -- the Lexus RX 400h sports utility vehicle -- in April and began selling the Toyota Highlander Hybrid in June.

"Both offer the power of a V8 [engine], the mileage of an automatic Mini Cooper, and 80 percent less smog-forming emissions than conventional SUVs," Press said.

Next year, Toyota plans to introduce two more hybrids -- the Lexus GS hybrid sedan and a Camry hybrid built in the automaker's Kentucky plant.

Japanese rival Honda Motor Co currently has three hybrid vehicles while Ford Motor Co has two hybrids in the market and three more in development.

General Motors Corp, Chrysler and Nissan Motor Co also have hybrids in development.

Toyota is also working on clean diesel, natural gas and fuel-cell vehicles.

Fuel cells offer the best long-term solution for reducing pollution, Press said.

A number of automakers have developed prototypes but they have not yet found a way to produce them at commercially viable prices, while the infrastructure needed to deliver hydrogen to drivers is lacking.

Japan's top-selling newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, said yesterday that Honda Motor, General Motors and BMW had agreed to a tie-up to develop hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, billed as the next generation of eco-friendly cars.

General Motors and Toyota were planning shortly to launch a fuel-cell joint venture. But the two firms are to scrap the venture over a disagreement on how much technology to share with each other, according to a report in Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper last week.
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