Toyota aims to commercialize diesel hybrid car in 2010

...by 2010 other car makers will have the upperhand by several years.

I went to Toyota today, despite against my better judgement that they are crap, and test drove the new bB. Not a bad drive, the suspension left something to be desired, but overall, a nice roomy car with some nice gadgets.
However, the lack of sales service and willingness to give discounts made me go to Mazda, Honda and Subaru. Toyota wanted to charge ME for putting the extras on a new car, even after I pointed out that the alloy wheels they quoted as being 281,000yen a set, were only 94,000yen at Yellow Hat!!
It was the same 4 years ago when they tried to devalue my car by 400,000yen because 'the cigarette lighter has been used'. Yes, it was, but that's how it was when I originally bought the car from them in the first place (used of course)!

Toyota is slow on service, slow on discretion and certainly slow on updating their designs!

 

Don't know how well Toyota's diesel hybrid do, but I have to agree about Toyota' business practices. We bought a Toyota 10 years ago. Service was good, but not great. Sales rep came to the house 3-4 times a year trying to get us to buy a new car. A little bothersome, but I always enjoyed sitting down and talking with him about the new cars. This year we decided to buy a new car. The sales rep was estatic. We found a car we liked and were all set to buy it...until they told us that we needed a guarantor for the loan. He had assured us that we wouldn't need a Japanese guarantor for the loan, but the main office said that we did. This was after having had one loan with them and doing business with them for 10 years. We said 'Thank you', left and went to Volkswagen across the street, who gave us the loan for a more expensive car without blinking an eye. I think Toyota sucks(though I did like their yearly calendars).

 

It's not as if suddenly by 2010 that the Toyota design will be 4 years out of date.. It takes time to R&D the stuff, and by then I would think Toyota would be at the cutting edge of this technology.. hopefully by then the batteries and integration would have been made to be so small and at affordable and mass production prices.. You are forgetting this is Toyota we are talking about and not Ford..

 

It won't be long before hybrid car technology is recognized as by far more advantaged and offers more benefits than hydrogen fuel cell and bio-fuels. We should be wary though of psuedo-hybrids like the General Motors hybrid model Saturn VUE, an SUV, and the so-called hybrid truck. Even the Honda Hybrid is suspect.

The key to determining the most advanced hybrid is whether the electric motor can drive the car/truck without the engine running. In psuedo-hybrid models, the electric motor is an 'assist' to the internal combustion engine (ICE). Or, an electric motor is fanbelt-strapped onto a standard ICE drivetrain and performs a simple 'Stop-Start' feature; good for when traffic is bumper-to-bumper and at stopsigns and stop lights, but nowhere else.

In the Prius and Ford Escape, the ICE is an 'assist' to the electric motor. By simply adding a larger battery pack to the Prius/Escape hybrid type, zero-emission motoring is possible and so much, much, much, much more.

Toyota for President!

 

This reminds me when I bought my brand new Celica 4WD Turbo back in 1991. They asked me over three million Yen in cash for it, and when I told the salesman that Nissan offered me a 20% discount on the price of a SX180, the guy replied: "If you care about the price, then go buy a Nissan. If you want a Toyota, you should pay for it".