Report: Toyota Targeting 50% of Cars Sold in Europe to Be Diesels or Hybrids by 2010
22 November 2006
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reports that Toyota Motor plans to increase the proportion of fuel-efficient diesel and hybrid passenger vehicles that it sells in Europe from 43% of its new car sales in 2005 to 50% in 2010.
Toyota sold about 1 million passenger vehicles in Europe in 2005, of which 41% were diesel-powered and 2% were gas-electric hybrids. For 2010, it is targeting European sales of 1.5 million passenger vehicles, with the proportion of diesel-powered models at 45% and that of hybrids at 5%, according to the paper.
Toyota’s hybrids make up 6% of its passenger vehicles sold in North America and only 3% in Japan. In Europe, diesel-powered vehicles account for more than 50% of the market.
Toyota will use engines co-developed with Isuzu (earlier post) in the European models. The report also says that Toyota separately is developing a new generation of high-performance diesel engines.
Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe says the firm has already established technology to develop diesel-electric hybrid engines, which will likely be more fuel-efficient than gas-electric hybrids. But commercializing the technology is expected to take time because of the associated high cost.
50% by 2010 is a very conservative estimate i would say! Toyota have no less than 3 d4-d units available (for just cars) from 1.4 to 2.2 litres with the latter 175hp D-CAT going in everything from the Corolla Verso to the RAV4 and IS200.
70% by 2010 seems far more plausable especially given that Land Cruiser, Amazon (Highlander), RX-series (Lexus) and HiLux will be 90% diesel sales.
Posted by: mark | 24 November 2006 at 05:22 AM
*correction* sorry, no RX diesel avail... yet! I suppose, given the Isuzu alliance
Posted by: Mark | 24 November 2006 at 05:26 AM
It´s not a conservative guestimate: The patrol engine is coming back!
Posted by: michel | 24 November 2006 at 08:19 AM
Mistake, Michel. Petrols are not back. Hybrids go ahead, diesel and diesel-hybrids, petrols will dissappear soon. We will have in Europe nearly 55% of diesels, 2% of hybrids, 5% of LPG and CNG, petrol is 38% only.
Then, we spare 35% of fuel compared with USA. Only the smallest and sport vehicles use petrol in Europe.
Posted by: Peter | 24 November 2006 at 09:16 AM
Peter -
the European auto industry is fighting hard to prevent the EU commission from tightening upcoming emissions standards to the point where the total cost of ownership advantage is lost for all but the largest and heaviest cars. That may sound strange but DPFs and especially lean-burn NOx aftertreatment devices are quite expensive. Of course, they said the same thing about the three-way catalyst when that was introduced in Europe.
More tellingly, mandatory fleet average CO2 emissions are very likely to come into effect before long. European refineries cannot deliver infinite quantities of diesel, indeed some countries already have to import diesel and export their surplus gasoline to e.g. the US (which is notoriously short on refinery capacity). Therefore, expect to see more downsized, turbocharged gasoline engines with (partially) variable valvetrains and spray-guided direct injection in D and premium C segment vehicles. Some concepts may even derate maximum power to leverage lag-minimizing VTG turbo technology without braking the bank on the materials involved.
European carmakers are also expected to finally come out with some mild gasoline hybrids, which offer better TCO than the full variety. High-end vehicles with the latter variety will be sold in the US, where Toyota has managed to fool consumers into thinking that anything less than full is just wannabe. Btw, a diesel hybrid is a useful concept for city buses etc. but not passenger car.
So I tend to agree with Michel - European auto makers will try to maintain diesel sales volume and ramp up gasoline vehicle sales in the coming years.
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | 24 November 2006 at 07:12 PM