Toyota Hybrid Cars
Toyota and their hybrid cars
The production lines and methods used in manufacturing war-time vehicles were quickly transferred for civil production in post-war years. By 1970 Toyota Company started to ship its cars all over the world. In the early 90s even before the global climate impact of cars and the environmental care started to be major topics, Toyota began the research of economical and fuel-efficient cars. This made the company the headliner in the production of environmental-safe cars and later hybrid cars.
A hybrid car is a vehicle using a combination of conventional fuel engine and electric engine to run. Nowadays Toyota is the world’s largest hybrid vehicle manufacturer. Toyota has 4 different hybrid vehicles – Prius, Camry, Auris and Highlander. All of them use Toyota’s Hybrid Energy Drive. This includes specially designed transmission system, single fuel engine and two electrical motors. These motors allow the fuel engine to turn off during short urban trips, which makes the cars highly efficient as urban vehicle. Even more efficiency is achieved with aerodynamic design and electrical energy storage used to even further minimizes the usage of fuel.
The most popular hybrid car by Toyota is the Prius. This mid-sized compact car was first introduced to the Japan’s market in the distant 1997, four years later Toyota started shipping Prius all over the world. Since then Prius had gone through three generations and sold more than two million units worldwide. The newest model of Prius is one of the world’s top fuel-efficient cars. The third generation features the so called EV mode which allows the car to run only on its batteries. This way of driving is highly prized as a way to navigate through residential areas during the night, since the sound emissions coming from the engine are almost none. However driving in EV mode exhausts the batteries very quickly and so it is not suited for longer drive. The improved aerodynamics on the third generation Prius make the car not only more fuel-efficient, but also give it better performance. Many costumer on the U.S. marked have complained over the lower performance of Prius compared to the hybrid version of Civic. This matter is settled with the new design of Prius.
As the prices of gasoline are going higher and higher, hybrid cars are becoming more widespread. Many countries offer discount on toll taxes and car polls fees for drivers of hybrid vehicles. Since the environmental impact of cars has come to the attention of the society many manufacturers are targeting this area of production. Toyota stays in the first line of these companies with Prius. The car is considered one of the world’s best hybrid cars with CO2 emissions as low as 3.7 tons per year. Despite its relatively higher price hybrid cars are very good investment in the long run.
About the Author
Toyota is a great choice when we talk about economic cars (Do you know that the term in Danish is Økonomiske biler?).
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