The 2010 Prius has been a popular car for Toyota since it first went on sale several months ago, but the pace of sales will slow considerably over the next few months. The reason for the lull is that the Prius’s battery supplier, Panasonic EV, can’t keep up with the demand. The third-generation of Toyota’s...
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In a strange turn of events, a source inside Toyota has told the U.K.’s AutoCar that the Japanese automaker isn’t looking to build a hybrid version of the Yaris. The source says the car won’t be built in France, Japan or anywhere; not yet anyway. Toyota does plan to build hybrid versions of every car...
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Just a few weeks after Toyota officially announced that it would build a hybrid version of the Corolla-based Auris in the U.K., new reports suggest a similar (but smaller) model is being prepared for Japan and Europe. The car would be built in Japan for the Japanese market and Toyota has plans to build a...
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Mazda is reportedly in talks with Toyota over the prospect of licensing hybrid technology from Japan’s largest automaker for use in future green cars. Currently Nissan has a similar arrangement with Toyota for the Altima Hybrid. Mazda currently has one hybrid model, the Tribute HEV (pictured above), which is based on the Escape Hybrid and...
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Yesterday Toyota announced that due to financial reasons it will not be able to host the 2010 Japanese Grand Prix, a move which could jeopardize a visit by Formula 1 to Japan next year. The race was scheduled to be run at Fuji Speedway, which is owned by Toyota but given the current economic climate...
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According to a report in Japan’s Nikkei business paper, Toyota expects to sell as many as 30,000 plug-in Prius models annually once production begins in 2012. This would put the PHEV Prius on the market almost two years after General Motors has said its plug-in hybrid, the Volt, will be launched. The paper is also...
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Toyota will bring its iQ city car to North America by 2012, badged as a Scion model. Scion debuted a concept of the iQ (shown above) at the New York Auto Show this year. When it does launch, however, expect it to look significantly more tame. Currently the mini car (about the size of a...
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Toyota may share a version of its Prius hybrid with General Motors according to a recent report by Bloomberg. Sources say Toyota President Akio Toyoda and GM CEO Fritz Henderson will meet in August in Michigan to discuss the possibility of selling a version GM-badged Prius – or possibly using Toyota hybrid technology to build...
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Aston Martin has just released details of an upcoming concept car the luxury British automaker is working on… and it’s not at all what you might expect. Rather than a high-powered exotic, this new machine, called the Cygnet, is a tiny commuter car. The Cygnet is based on the Toyota iQ and while it sounds...
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According to its sources, 7Tune is reporting that Toyota is in fact preparing a successor to the Supra. This top-level sports car has taken a back seat to the economy-minded 086A – the code name for the yet unnamed joint Toyota/Subaru project. It’s also likely that development of a Supra-successor has been slowed due to...
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Thanks to Lequios, you can do more for the environment once you’re dead than just become fertilizer for pushing up daisies. The Japanese hearse manufacturer is designing a hearse based on the 2010 Toyota Prius, meaning your last trip in a car can be an environmentally-responsible one. And you thought saving the planet for future...
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One of the last things Shoichiro Toyoda did as honorary chairman at Toyota Motor Corp., was to assemble all of the company’s executives and give them a tongue lashing. Toyoda even called out president Katsuaki Watanabe and blamed him, as well as those other executives in charge of the Japanese automaker, for leaving behind the...
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The Toyobaru, in case you haven’t heard, is a secret car that, as the name would suggest, is being built as a joint project by Toyota and Subaru. Code named the 086A, the possibility that the two Japanese automakers might actually build the thing sounds like a dream – and yet the rumors about it...
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While Toyota’s sales may be suffering as a whole, sales of the all-new 2010 Prius are well above expectations. In fact, the Japanese automaker is having trouble keeping up with demand – something which may result in lengthy waiting lists for the third-generation of Toyota’s successful hybrid. At the two facilities where the Prius is...
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Toyota has finally made the decision to stop producing the Solara Convertible. It’s not likely to be missed. The Coupe model was discontinued last summer (in case you hadn’t noticed), but Toyota decided to keep up convertible production as there were no other drop-top models in the entire company’s vehicle lineup. A few months later...
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Toyota appears to be readying a convertible version of the iQ minicar that is currently on sale in Japan and Europe. The report comes from Japan’s Best Car magazine, which suggests much of the basics will be kept including a 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine that makes 99hp and 92 ft-lbs of torque. Fuel-economy for this engine...
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Toyota has announced that it will lease 500 plug-in hybrid-electric Prius models starting this year. These will be the first plug-in version of the Prius on the road and will feature new lithium-ion battery packs, which hold more energy than the conventional nickel-metal hydride batteries used in other hybrid systems. Of the 500 vehicles, 200...
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The all-new Toyota Prius was the most popular selling car in Japan for the month of May, according to numbers just released by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association. In total, Toyota sold 10,915 Prius models to take the top sales spot, which was held last month by rival Honda Motor Co. and its new Insight...
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Car sales for the month of May appear to show a certain level of recovery – at least for U.S. automakers Ford and General Motors. Ford posted a loss of 28.5 percent, its best result since July of 2008. As for GM, it declined “just” 29 percent marking its best monthly performance since September. In...
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The new 2010 Toyota Prius isn’t about to let the Honda Insight take over in the hybrid segment and strong initial sales show the Toyota model will be another big success for Japan’s largest automaker. Japanese business magazine Nikkei is reporting that Toyota has already accepted 75,000 orders for the new Prius. This news comes...
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A day after GM posted yet another staggering quarterly loss, Toyota has released that it expects to lose $8.6 billion during this fiscal year. The loss was mostly driven by Toyota’s Q4 results, which just came in at negative $6.9 billion. This is the first annual operating loss Toyota has ever posted and even more...
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Interesting times indeed. As the economy continues to lumber on, this economic shakeup is certainly changing things in the automotive industry. While in a bustling economy it may take decades for shifts to happen in an industry, it can take just a month in a recession. And so with every passing month the sales figures...
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With news today that the Pontiac brand will in fact be eliminated, General Motors is eager to get working with Toyota to build a new shared platform to replace the Vibe. The Vibe is to GM what the Matrix is to Toyota, and both models come from an evenly shared joint venture known as New United...
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Toyota is expected to release pricing for the new 2010 Prius tomorrow and the cost of ownership will be 21,000. This is $1,000 less than the current model. Bloomberg is reporting the drop and citing an unnamed source. This news comes several weeks after Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported Toyota made a similar move in it’s...
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