The company’s very first hybrid, launched in Japan in August, 1997, was the Coaster Hybrid bus. Four months later, in December, 1997, the original Prius was put on the market.

Currently, Toyota offers sixteen different hybrid models in about eighty different countries around the world, including three commercial models sold only in Japan. By the end of next year, the carmaker intends to introduce ten new hybrids, including four redesigned models and six fresh launches.

Toyota’s first million global hybrid sales took an entire decade, but the pace of hybrid deployment has accelerated since the late 1990s, and the second million only took two years – to May, 2009. Another 21 months later, and Toyota had passed the three million hybrid milestone, this during a major downturn in automotive sales across the globe.

As business progresses, gas prices creep higher, and ecology becomes more important to more people, Toyota is growing ever closer to reaching it’s goal of selling a million hybrid cars every year.

We agree, and want to share KBB’s list of reasons why a used hybrid car may be the right ride for you:

* Historically, hybrids have retained their value, outpacing the overall market. In fact, $4 gas meant huge hybrid premiums and dealer mark-ups. The times have changed.
* Low gas prices are a major factor. Steady prices at the pumps have resulted in a relative lack of demand for new hybrid vehicles.
* At the same time, technological improvements in gas-powered cars, like the Ford Fiesta and Chevy Cruze, are giving hybrids a run for the money in the new car market—especially during the recession.
* This has put a downward pressure on hybrid residual values and prices on used hybrids.
* In this period of low gas prices, spending less on a used hybrid—rather than a new one—means a quicker payback period.
* KBB says the payback period on used Honda Civic Hybrid is reduced to five years, rather than 16 years supposedly required for a new purchase. (Yet, despite lower gas prices, the premium on a Toyota Prius apparently has held firm and doesn’t help the used buyer as much.)

KBB also says that more and more consumers are finding that the lower prices of used hybrid cars make it more feasible to get all the benefits – lower gas prices, less harm to environment, ability to use commuter lanes – to the tune of an increase in web traffic from people looking for these used vehicles of 20%.

May 20, 2010 – Palo Alto, California, U.S.A. — Tesla Motors, Inc. (Tesla) and Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) today announced that they intend to cooperate on the development of electric vehicles, parts, and production system and engineering support.

The two companies intend to form a team of specialists to further those efforts. TMC has agreed to purchase $50 million of Tesla’s common stock issued in a private placement to close immediately subsequent to the closing of Tesla’s currently planned initial public offering.

“I sensed the great potential of Tesla’s technology and was impressed by its dedication to monozukuri (Toyota’s approach to manufacturing),” said TMC President Akio Toyoda. “Through this partnership, by working together with a venture business such as Tesla, Toyota would like to learn from the challenging spirit, quick decision-making, and flexibility that Tesla has. Decades ago, Toyota was also born as a venture business. By partnering with Tesla, my hope is that all Toyota employees will recall that ‘venture business spirit,’ and take on the challenges of the future.”

“Toyota is a company founded on innovation, quality, and commitment to sustainable mobility. It is an honor and a powerful endorsement of our technology that Toyota would choose to invest in and partner with Tesla,” said Tesla CEO and cofounder Elon Musk. “We look forward to learning and benefiting from Toyota’s legendary engineering, manufacturing, and production expertise.”

The good news is: government and corporate vehicle fleets can switch to hybrid vehicles much more quickly than the general public, which is why it’s pretty cool that both UPS and FedEx are going green.

Specifically, UPS announced last Tuesday that it’s expanding it’s fleet of hybrid-electric delivery trucks from fifty to two hundred and fifty. These trucks are powered by a system that uses a standard diesel engine in tandem with a battery pack to reduce emissions and save on fuel. The additional 200 hybrid trucks are expected to decrease fuel consumption by about 176,000 gallons over the course of a year (as compared to the same number of traditional diesel trucks). The batteries being used are lithium ion cells, which provide greater longevity and faster recharging than older hybrid batteries.

On a smaller scale, FedEx will be adding four electric delivery trucks to its Los Angeles fleet of 600 vehicles next month, as part of a pilot project to determine if wider use is feasible in the US. The five-ton trucks, produced by Navistar (an Illinois-based company) can travel 100 miles on a single charge, though FedEx’s drivers will be covering less than fifty miles a day. These trucks represent only a tiny fraction of FedEx’s 40,000-vehicle fleet, but the idea behind the pilot is to increase demand for such vehicles, thereby reducing the cost. FedEx has actually been pursuing fuel-efficient technology since 2004, when it added 325 hybrid vehicles to the global fleet. Those 325 trucks have saved almost 34 million gallons of fuel, according to FedEx.

Also getting into the electric truck scene is the U.S. Postal Service, which spent $210 million on 6,500 vehicles last June. Those vehicles are either powered by gas-electric hybrid powertrains, use smaller gas engines than conventional trucks, or are ethanol-capable.

Those tax credits were part of a national program offering clean vehicle incentives beginning in 2005, and provided up to $3,400 each for 60,000 buyers per automaker, before a 16-month phase-out period. When Ford reached 60,000 hybrids sold sometime before April 1, 2009, that meant that as of April 1, 2010 there are no tax credits left for any Ford Hybrids. Other automakers – specifically BMW, General Motors, Mercedes, and Volkswagen, still have credits left for the purchase of hybrids and clean diesel vehicles, but most of those brands sell only low volumes of hybrids, with the possible exception of Volkwagen’s Jetta TDI.

Currently, hybrids account for less than 3% of the new car market, which means analysts and advocates of the green car market are left wondering if hybrid tax credits have been phased out too early in the process. As the folks at HybridCars point out:

After a decade in the market, hybrids have become more commonplace and therefore, with tax credits and other incentives, could reach a much larger part of the mainstream market. Incentives could encourage automakers and consumers to put millions of high-mpg low-emission hybrids on the road—the original goal of the tax credits.

Instead of doing more work to encourage the purchase of very viable hybrid vehicles, however, most legislators have jumped on the newest tech bandwagon: electric cars, and plug-in hybrids. There now exists a combination of local and national credits including up to $7,500 federal dollars plus a $2,000 for the installation of charging equipment, in addition to state-based incentives, which are available to private buyers of green electric-drive vehicles.

So, what’s the problem? First, these vehicles are not yet available to the general public, and when they do come on the market later this year, even with tax credits they will be very expensive, and not very numerous. While some see this as a good reason for generous tax credits, others point out that the first wave of consumers to buy these cars are those who would likely do so without any tax credits, because they believe in the cause, and the viability of plug-in cars. Meanwhile, mainstream buyers who might consider a hybrid purchase with a bit of a nudge, won’t receive one.

What does this mean for the future? Some analysts believe that we could be looking at a several year gap in the right incentives for the right buyers of greener cars and trucks.

Tom Stephens, GM vice chairman, global product operations, told reporters, “By designing and manufacturing electric motors in-house, we can more efficiently use energy from batteries as they evolve, potentially reducing cost and weight—two significant challenges facing batteries today.” He also said that the American-made electric motors would offer increased affordability and reliability, in addition to being easier to build.

General Motors’ investment in electric motor technology has been funded, in part, by a $105 million grant received from the U.S. Department of Energy in August, 2009.

GM’s announcement cements the company’s commitment to it’s two-mode system, which, so far, has only been used in hybrid vehicles like the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid and Chevy Silverado Hybrid. According to a company representative, new motors will allow GM to apply its existing system to smaller vehicles, as the new motors would be smaller, but offer more power density.

Under current plans, the first electric motors produced in the new facility will go into two-mode hybrids, but GM has not completely eliminated the possibility of making motors for the Chevy Volt and other purely electric vehicles that might be planned for the future. Currently, the company is using a refurbished Michigan factory to assemble lithium ion cells supplied by South Korea’s LG Chem into battery packs for the Volt.

At the time of the article, December 8th, available data put the 2009 total units sold in the United States on track for 10.3 million by the end of the year, with projected sales of 11.5 million units in 2010.

According to an Edmunds.com senior analyst, Jessica Caldwell, value and fuel economy are still the order of the day, for most shoppers. “It has already become trendy to make sensible choices, and we expect that this will be a theme for 2010 sales,” she said.

For a significant number of car shoppers, “fuel economy and value” are roughly equal to “hybrid technology.” If the numbers are correct, rougly 3.2 percent of 2010 car and truck sales will be hybrid cars, an increase over the 2009 hybrid market share of 2.8 percent, while 2.2 percent of sales will be diesel.

What about 2010 electric cars? Edmunds.com’s numbers don’t address all electrics – new plug-ins are generally excluded, for example, but they predict less than one percent of units sold will be electric, while roughly 2.2 percent will be diesel powered.

Does this mean an overall grim future for electrics and hybrids? Not necessarily. According to Edmunds.com senior statistician Zhenwei Zhou, PhD, “Given historical alternative fuel trends, the ‘early adopters’ will boost electric car market share upon launch, but it will take some time before significant market share builds for the segment.”