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Toyota has hinted at plans to launch a brand new iteration of the Prius, one in every of its longest-serving fashions, alongside its first battery-electric automobiles.
The Toyota Prius was launched in 1997, initially in saloon kind, as the primary mass-produced hybrid automobile. Some 24 years later and in its fourth technology, it stays one of many best-selling hybrids worldwide, evaluating favourably with its Camry, C-HR, Corolla, Highlander, RAV4 and Yaris siblings, which all use variations of the ‘self-charging’ hybrid expertise it pioneered.
However Toyota has thus far remained tight-lipped on the mannequin’s future, even because it confirms that hybrid powertrains will proceed to play a key position in its electrification technique over the approaching years.
Requested if the Prius continues to be an necessary a part of Toyota’s line-up and whether or not there can be one other technology, product and advertising and marketing boss Andrea Carlucci advised Autocar: “It stays the pioneer into electrification – and has been clearly, for Toyota, an icon. It began our journey again greater than 25 years in the past.
“It has to maintain a task, and now we have to ensure it should all the time be a front-runner with that form of expertise, so – though I can not disclose a lot – we do not wish to waste our icon, even for the longer term.”
Carlucci hinted on the continued viability of full-hybrid powertrains over the approaching years as EV charging infrastructure expands. “Once we take a look at Europe,” he mentioned, “we outline a area the place we would have an acceleration; however globally, as we attempt to show the totally different options, we nonetheless have a centre of gravity across the hybrid.
“So the Prius stays clearly iconic and stands for what we’re: hybrid and a pacesetter in electrification.”
The Prius has been on sale in its present kind since 2016 and, primarily based on the six-year lifecycles of the earlier iterations, is up for renewal in 2022.
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