Toyota News

Toyota quietly unloaded the rest of its Tesla shares near the end of last year. In the process, the Japanese automaker confirmed its partnership to develop electric vehicles and related technologies had been canceled. Toyota has by far shown the most restraint in developing battery electric...

Earlier this year in Europe, 13 companies joined forces to create the Hydrogen Council, a global initiative to discuss and promote the use of hydrogen as a renewable source of energy. In the United States, GM and Honda have partnered up to build a production plant in Michigan that will roll out...

The challenge of reducing the energy used by traditional heating systems in battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars is one automakers still grapple with today. Reduced battery range in cold temperatures, combined with batteries working overtime to heat the cabin, can produce drastic declines in...

Every automaker is now working on one or many electric cars, but some are at the head of the pack and others lag behind. General Motors already sells the 238-mile Chevrolet Bolt EV, and Volkswagen has firm plans for multiple electric cars by 2020 and as many as 30 by 2025. That leaves Toyota, the...

Toyota's staunch, unswerving support for hydrogen fuel cells has astonished and aggravated many in the electric vehicle community. For some of them, the technology is at best an inferior solution—and at worst is fossil fuel-friendly vaporware, a Judas in Jesus's clothing, if you will. With...

It hasn't been the greatest of years for the Toyota Prius hybrid, the Japanese carmaker's flagship product. The fourth generation hybrid hatchback debuted as a 2016 model into the teeth of continued low gasoline prices, and its radical design language apparently turned off at least some potential...

If green cars can reduce emissions, why shouldn't their advertising do the same? That's the theory behind a series of billboards in relevant California markets that advertise the Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell sedan. But these billboards will do more than try to attract the eyes of potential...

Sport-utility vehicles started out as truck offshoots, essentially tall wagon bodies on truck underpinnings. Think of the first Chevy Suburban in 1935, which remained a specialty vehicle (mostly for Texans) for its first 40 years. Fast-forward another 40 years, and my, how things have changed...

For better or worse, many Toyota models ultimately donate their underpinnings to the Japanese automaker's Lexus luxury brand. That may not give certain Lexus models the pedigree some purists desire, but it's a fact of life in the modern auto industry—and an effective way for Toyota to...

Toyota has reached yet another significant milestone in global hybrid sales. The Japanese automaking giant has surpassed 10 million hybrid sales globally since the launch of the first-generation Prius in 1997. That total includes hybrids sold under Toyota's Lexus luxury brand, as well as sales of...

Toyota has been by far the most reluctant of recent converts to the idea that battery-electric vehicles might be practical and desirable. Only within the last year has the company moved past its decade-long insistence that all-electric cars were only suitable for tiny, low-range urban uses. Still...

As is the norm these days, the ads running during Super Bowl LI this past weekend drew almost as much attention as the game itself. Automakers are among the myriad companies that expend considerable creative and monetary resources on Super Bowl ads every year. And green cars make occasional...

In addition to automakers and policymakers, battery-electric cars can count on support from a variety of advocacy groups. But grassroots support for hydrogen fuel-cell cars hasn't germinated to quite the same extent. So, in the absence of a large cadre of individual consumers to act as advocates, a...

How do you advertise new and innovative zero-emission vehicles, whether they're electric or fuel-cell cars? It's a question that's bedeviled carmakers and their marketers, who continue to experiment with messaging, different audiences, and programs to get people into the cars. The challenge is...

The Toyota Prius Prime is a far better car than its plug-in hybrid predecessor, and it seems likely to become one of the higher-volume plug-in electric cars on the U.S. market. If, that is, Toyota's own dealers prove willing to sell it—or even find out that it exists. After three separate...

Over the past six months, Toyota has made some remarkable decisions about its present and future car technologies. After years of staunch opposition to battery-electric vehicles, it committed to launching one by 2020. Now, the company has decided to offer its proprietary hybrid technology in volume...

The 2017 Toyota Prius Prime turned out to be a better plug-in hybrid than we had expected when we drove it around sunny Ojai, California, on the press launch in October. It's a viable competitor to the second-generation Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, though the Volt has an EPA-rated 53 miles of...

Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda will lead the company's new electric-car division.

Mazda may launch an electric car in 2019.

The signals are now unmistakable: Toyota will offer a battery-electric car for sale in 2020. After a decade of condemning electric cars as suitable only for the smallest vehicles in around-town use, the world's largest car company is changing its tune. Yet another news story out of Japan has...