Toyota

Auto giants Ford and Toyota plan to jointly develop a hybrid powertrain for light trucks and SUVs, in a move designed to bring hybrid technology to a wider set of vehicles.

The two companies announced the agreement today, calling it a collaboration of "equal partners" that will yield a new hybrid architecture for rear-wheel-drive vehicles later in the decade. Both companies will integrate the hybrid system into their own trucks and SUVs.

Toyota and Ford will also work together on in-car telematics, although this will focus on standards and technologies for safety and communications. They will both continue … Read more

CULVER CITY, Calif.--With the 2012 Yaris, Toyota is promoting an image as much as a car. The automaker is gearing up to target the four-cylinder at entry-level buyers as likely to spend their money on video games and MP3s as they are a new set of wheels. ("Yaris! It's a car!" reads a cutesy little ad campaign with bright, cheery letters).

The youth-centric campaign is primarily marketing hype, as the Yaris is no more or less appealing to someone in a Captain America T-shirt in San Francisco as it is to a middle-class family in Milwaukee. An inexpensive car that saves you money on gas can sell itself in this repressed economy if it's put together correctly. And the Yaris is a fun, unassuming ride that falls a little short of adjectives like zippy or thrilling. It doesn't feel as cool as a Fiat 500, as powerful as a Volkswagen Golf, or as substantial as a Ford Fiesta, but for $14,115 to $17,200 (depending on the setup) it's close enough for young drivers entering the market. … Read more

Toyota Motor will build its first electric vehicle produced outside Japan in the Canadian province of Ontario as part of a multimillion-dollar public-private project announced in July.

The automaker will build the vehicle--an electric version of the RAV4 SUV--at its plant in Woodstock, Ontario, the Canadian government said in a release today.

Toyota plans to invest as much as C$545 million ($558 million) in the overall project. Known as Operation Green Light, the plan includes upgrades at other Toyota plants in Ontario, the country's industrial heartland.

The Canadian government will chip in C$70.84 million toward C$… Read more

Interbrand released a report today ranking the world's most green brands in terms of both perception and performance.

The companies on their list are not just using green initiatives as a way of creating a positive image with consumers. They are also making money from them.

Toyota ranked first, not only due to the financial success of its hybrid-electric Prius and its partnership on the all-electric Tesla. But since 1992 the auto manufacturer has also made large strides reducing energy use, water consumption, waste, and toxic emissions, according to Interbrand.

Among the 50 top green brands, Toyota is followed … Read more

Imagine a situation where a kid chases a ball into a street. Even for drivers with lightning-sharp reflexes, there might not be enough braking distance to avoid impact. But Toyota's next-generation crash avoidance technology may be able to solve that problem by steering the vehicle out of harm's way.

Designed in part to reduce pedestrian fatalities, Toyota's Pre-Collision System (PCS) with collision-avoidance assist uses stereo camera and millimeter-wave radars installed around the vehicle to identify objects in its path. If the system calculates that there isn't enough time to brake and that a crash with an … Read more

Toyota is toying with augmented reality to improve the view outside of its vehicles' windows.

A design exercise developed in conjunction with the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID), Toyota's "Window to the World" concept uses augmented reality to turn a car window into a glass canvas that lets the viewer interact with the elements outside the window.

CIID and Toyota Kansei Design Division engineers and designers came up with five potential uses for the new windows. Similar to the way kids draw shapes onto fogged-up glass, passengers can trace images on the window, but they appear … Read more

Tesla Motors today said that it has signed an agreement worth $100 million to supply electric power train equipment to Toyota.

In a regulatory filing, Tesla said that it will supply the battery, charging system, inverter, motor, and related software to power Toyota's planned electric version of its RAV4. Toyota plans to sell the small SUV to both consumer and residential customers next year.

Toyota took a $50 million stake in Tesla last year and signed an agreement to use Tesla's electric power train in the electric RAV4. In Tesla's filing, it said production of the electric … Read more

Toyota affirmed today that an electric version of its Rav4 small SUV would go on sale to the public in 2012. Other reports had suggested the vehicle would be available only for fleets.

The new Rav4 EV will use a Tesla-built drive system, and get 100 miles of range in real-world driving. Toyota showed off a concept version of the Rav4 EV at last year's Los Angeles auto show.

Earlier this month, Toyota announced an electric version of its Scion iQ city car. With the Rav4 EV, Toyota says it will be the only automaker offering two electric cars … Read more

Looking through the EPA listings for 2011 model year cars, we picked out the most fuel efficient and compared them by a few different data points. Topping the EPA list is the 2011 Nissan Leaf, with its massive 99 mpg equivalent fuel economy. This number represents the combined city and highway mileage.

The 2011 Chevy Volt is more difficult to place, as the EPA lists two fuel economy figures, 93 mpg equivalent for electric operation and 37 mpg for gasoline operation. A simple average shows 65 mpg, which isn't particularly accurate but will do for this comparison.

That hybrid … Read more