Toyota sold more than one million hybrids in 2012
We make it a point to talk about hybrids and alternative fuel choices here on this blog, for the main reason that these are without a doubt the next step towards reducing our carbon footprint and a better environment. Today we are glad to report that the Toyota Motor Corporation – TMC – has managed to sell more than one million hybrids in 2012.
This may or may not seem that major, but when you look at it in context, you’ll start to understand the importance of this achievement.
To start off with, this million hybrid sale resulted in the best sales year on record for Toyota and Lexus hybrids, which in turn helps to give even more credibility to the technology, and to its growing popularity.
By the end of October of this year, Toyota and Lexus managed to jointly sell over 1,028,900 hybrid vehicles worldwide which is a major improvement over the same period of last year, when they sold only around 630,000.
This million sales number makes Toyota, by far the most popular manufacturer of hybrid vehicles worldwide, because Honda announced last week that they too managed to sell one million hybrids, in total since they introduced the technology in 1999.
While context is important, one also has to maintain a heavy dose of perspective as well, because hybrid sales only represent a very small portion of overall sales. In fact, eighty-six percent of TMC’s total vehicles sold this year so far, are conventionally powered.
But regardless how we look at it, one thing is clear, 2012 has been a massive year of TMC hybrid cars. Toyota needed 14 years to sell 3.5 million hybrids, but in just the past ten months they sold another full million, this is a great sign for what the future for hybrid sales might be.
