DETROIT – One of the 19 new or updated vehicles Toyota plans to launch this year in the U.S. will be a hybrid-electric vehicle that “will make waves” in the industry, promises Bob Carter, Toyota Div. group vice president and general manager, who declines to reveal specific details.
The new HEV will have “more room than a BMW X5, be faster than a (Volkswagen) TDI and have higher mpg than a Fiat 500,” with “lavish features rarely found in near-luxury vehicles, yet comes with the price and value of a Toyota,” he tells attendees at the Automotive News World Congress here.
Carter later tells the media the hybrid will be “designed, engineered, produced, sold and serviced” in the U.S. But it will not be a production version of the NS4 concept hybrid Toyota unveiled at the North American International Auto Show this week. Nor will it be another Prius derivative.
Toyota already has announced the next Avalon will have an American-born chief designer, Randy Stephens, based at the auto maker’s Ann Arbor, MI, research and development center.
If the new hybrid is an Avalon, it will join the Camry and Highlander as one of three Toyota models to offer an HEV variant. The auto maker has said it hopes to have a hybrid version of every model in its U.S. lineup sometime in the 2020s.
Toyota is keeping a lid on details of most of the upcoming 19 models. But Carter reveals that half will be hybrids or electric vehicles, including the recently announced Prius plug-in, Toyota RAV4 and Scion iQ EVs and the Lexus GS 450h hybrid.
The U.S. Toyota chief reiterates the auto maker’s plans to begin sales later this year of the electrified RAV4 cross/utility vehicle in the major metropolitan areas of California, and that the iQ EV will participate in urban car-sharing programs.
He also reminds that Toyota will retail a hydrogen fuel-cell sedan by 2015.
With so much new product hitting the U.S. market this year, Toyota’s advertising will tout each vehicle as a “smart, safe, worry-free choice for consumers,” Carter says. “We plan to be very aggressive in marketing this year.”
