Automakers focus on hybrids

Toyota looks to next-generation hybrids

In 1994, he finally got his dream. Little did he know that the car he was about to design -- the Prius -- would revolutionize the global auto industry.

Uchiyamada, 61, now executive vice president, was tackling the first mass production gas-electric hybrid, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in December.

The Prius was a big step forward for the future of green cars. Up next for Toyota and its rivals: Far more powerful batteries for next-generation hybrids, plug-in electric cars and eventually zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen, which combines with oxygen in the air to form water.

Introduced in Japan in December 1997, and the following year in the U.S., the Prius, now in its second generation, gets about 46 miles per gallon switching between a gas engine and electric motor. It has been by far the most successful hybrid, selling a cumulative 829,000 vehicles -- making up for most of Toyota's nearly 1.2 million hybrid sales.

Toyota has gotten a kick from the Prius, an enhanced global image for technological innovation, social responsibility and fashionable glamour, analysts say.

The Prius is also one solid bright spot for Toyota, whose reputation for quality is starting to tarnish as it targets a record of selling 10.4 million vehicles globally in 2009. Meanwhile, its recalls are also ballooning.

As Uchiyamada tells it, the Prius wasn't the kind of car Toyota would have ever approved as a project, if standard decision-making had been followed. It was sure to be a money loser for years.

Conventional wisdom was wrong; Toyota's once skeptical rivals are now all busy making hybrids.

Toyota officials acknowledge Honda Motor Co. is their biggest threat in developing new hybrids. Honda, which already markets the Civic hybrid, is hot on Toyota's heels with a hybrid sports car, a fuel-cell vehicle and other ecological cars.

Uchiyamada and Satoshi Ogiso, executive chief engineer working on the next Prius, confidently promise greater things.

The next Prius could include a new lithium-ion battery more advanced than the current nickel-metal hydride battery, allowing more power to be packed into a smaller battery.

But engineers acknowledge that will require a breakthrough in battery technology.

Toyota has other options in the works to dramatically boost mileage and performance, so a battery upgrade isn't the only way to revamp the Prius, Uchiyamada said. Toyota recently has begun public road tests on a plug-in hybrid.

Source: [url=http://www.ohio.com/business/11003721.html]Akron Beacon Journal[/url]