Toyota has said that cumulative sales of its Prius hybrid car had topped 1 million units worldwide since its launch just over a decade ago.

The Prius, the world’s first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid car, first went on sale in Japan in late 1997 and in other markets in 2000. Toyota remains the leader in hybrid sales, with Honda a distant second with its Civic model. Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, said it had sold about 1,028,000 Prius cars as of the end of April.
“Toyota believes that Prius vehicles worldwide have contributed to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by producing approximately 4.5 million tonnes less CO2 when compared with gasoline-powered vehicles in the same class and of similar size and driving performance,” it said in a statement.
Toyota remodelled the Prius with an improved hybrid system in 2003 and is widely expected to launch a third-generation version by next year.
By slashing production costs for the hybrid system, Toyota has said it would make the technology available across its line-up, with an aim to sell at least 1 million hybrid vehicles annually soon after 2010.
Last year, Toyota sold about 429,400 hybrid vehicles globally, up 37 per cent from 2006. That accounted for less than 5 per cent of its total vehicle sales.
In other Toyota news, the company said it was considering setting up a new plant to build small, low-cost cars.
Toyota spokesman Hideaki Homma said the company had not decided on details such as the location or timing of the move, but the Tokyo Shimbun daily reported that the plant would be in Brazil and the investment was likely to be in the tens of billions of yen.
The newspaper said Toyota’s new factory, which would be its second in Brazil, was likely to produce 150,000 to 200,000 units of small cars for emerging markets from 2011. It added the vehicles were likely to be priced around a million yen.
And in another development, the Asahi Shimbun daily reported that Toyota agreed to pay Nippon Steel Corp and other top Japanese steelmakers over 30 per cent more for sheet steel.
Such a price hike, which is in line with brokerages’ estimates, would boost the prospects that Nippon Steel, the world’s second-biggest steelmaker, will raise its earnings outlook for the current business year.
Japanese steelmakers have been hit by soaring costs of raw materials, with Nippon Steel forecasting a 34 per cent drop in pretax profit for the year ending in March 2009.
The Asahi reported that Toyota had agreed to a price increase of more than 25,000 yen ($238) per tonne for sheet steel this business year, allowing steelmakers to pass on most of the recent cost increases.