Toyota pledges more hybrid choices

TORRANCE, Calif., June 12 (UPI) -- Japanese carmaker Toyota Motors, calling hybrid technology its core technology, said it looks to soon sell 1 million gasoline-electric vehicles a year.

The automaker also appeared to be backing away from a pledge made four years ago that hybrid powertrains would be an option on nearly all of its U.S. vehicles by 2010, USA Today reported Tuesday.

"Hybrid technology is our core technology and we will double our hybrid lineup," Mira Sleilati, spokeswoman at Torrance, Calif.-based Toyota Motor North America, told the newspaper. "At the same time, we are accelerating the pace of our efforts to achieve annual sales of 1 million units in the early part of the 2010s."

Doubling the U.S. hybrid line would result in 12 hybrids, about one-third of the 35 models sold by Toyota's namesake brand, its Lexus luxury brand and its Scion youth brand.

Sales of gasoline-electric hybrids should boom 226 percent to 854,000 in 2011 from 262,000 last year, a forecast by J.D. Power and Associates predicted.

"If gas prices stay high, the sky's the limit," said J.D. Power spokesman John Tews.