Toyota which this year has overtaken General Motors as the world’s largest automotive manufacturer and is the maker of the highly successful Prius Hybrid, is continuing to try and improve on it’s track record by making more hybrids.
This year alone Toyota expects to sell 175,000 Prius hybrids in the United States, which is about 2.3 of all cars. This is up from 109,000 in 2006. Toyota already sells 60% of all hybrids on American roads. The success formula is simply that more efficient cars will become less expensive when compared with pure gasoline driven cars as gas prices continue to skyrocket. Jim Press , president of Toyota North America said that; "Eventually, everything will be a hybrid," and that It's going to be like the Model T when you look back..”
Ford meanwhile is busy pushing its hydrogen technologies forward, with shuttle buses at airport being powered by hydrogen. Ford meanwhile acknowledges that even though the technology could be on the road within the next decade there are still barriers such as a distribution network and public concerns regarding safety. John Lapetz a product manger for Ford said "We really believe this technology is ready to be evaluated at the consumer level,""The technology is there at a sufficient level, in the three-to-five year window, if all things were perfect, we could reasonably think this is a solution we could draw on."
