During Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe's speech at the Toyota Media reception at the Detroit Auto Show last Sunday night he mentioned the company hybrid sales goal. I didn't mention it in my own report of the event because I didn't consider it all that noteworthy since it's been discussed before. Evidently some other outlets and even Toyota felt it was important and did mention the subject, mis-quoting Watanabe at the same time.
In his speech, Watanabe re-stated the company's goals of offering hybrid variants of every model they sell as well as eventually reaching sales of 1 million hybrid vehicles a year. Where the Toyota Open Road blog and others erred was in the timing. They all reported that Watanabe said this would happen by 2010. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for Toyota's competitors) the company's goals are not quite that aggressive.
What he actually said is that they wanted to these levels during the 2010s. In other words Toyota wants to offer hybrids in every model line and sell one million a year during the next decade, or by 2020! It's a reasonable error to make given that, although Watanabe speaks English well, it is not his first language and the presentation came at the end of a grueling first day of the auto show and many of those in attendance were already starting to wind down with a few drinks by the time Watanabe took the stage.
[Source: Toyota Open Road blog]
In his speech, Watanabe re-stated the company's goals of offering hybrid variants of every model they sell as well as eventually reaching sales of 1 million hybrid vehicles a year. Where the Toyota Open Road blog and others erred was in the timing. They all reported that Watanabe said this would happen by 2010. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for Toyota's competitors) the company's goals are not quite that aggressive.
What he actually said is that they wanted to these levels during the 2010s. In other words Toyota wants to offer hybrids in every model line and sell one million a year during the next decade, or by 2020! It's a reasonable error to make given that, although Watanabe speaks English well, it is not his first language and the presentation came at the end of a grueling first day of the auto show and many of those in attendance were already starting to wind down with a few drinks by the time Watanabe took the stage.
[Source: Toyota Open Road blog]
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