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The Toyota Prius is one of the world's first commercially mass-produced and marketed hybrid automobile. The Prius first went on sale in Japan in 1997, and was introduced to the worldwide market in 2000. Prius was a run-away success with the demands exceeding the supply. Toyota plans to sell 1,50,000 hybrids in US in the year 2006. The company is also planning to expand the hybrid technology for all the models in the Toyota stable.
The company will be using the existing production facilities to manufacture hybrids rather than having a dedicated plant. Presently, the company offers hybrid versions for Prius, Toyota Highlander, Lexus RX330 and Camry.

Hybrids represented 1.2 percent of the total vehicles sold in 2005. The Toyota Prius led the way with 107,897 cars sold for the year 2005 - 52 percent of the total hybrid market. The next most popular hybrid was the Honda Civic Hybrid, which sold nearly 26,000 units.

The world's automakers are now embracing hybrid vehicles in an effort to match Toyota's success and give customers more options to combat high gas prices.

5. Employee Welfare Costs

The skyrocketing of the healthcare costs and the pensions for the retirees have drained the bottom lines of the Big Three, namely GM, Ford and Chrysler.

Healthcare Costs (for the plants in US)

On pensions, the Big Three supports 8,00,000 retirees (from the US operations) while Toyota has hardly 1,000 retirees which is indicative of a much younger workforce.

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* Contributed by -
Shine Jose Manjooran,
Ist Year - PGDBM,
XIME, Bangalore.