Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's biggest carmaker, is working to reduce the development time of new car models to help cut costs and respond quicker to changes in customer demand.
"If the development period gets shorter, costs come down," Akihiko Otsuka, chief engineer of the recently released third-generation Prius gasoline-electric hybrid, said in an interview yesterday. The company's aim to speed the process "isn't limited to just hybrid models."
The new Prius took about four and a half years to develop, Otsuka said in an interview at the company's headquarters in Toyota City. Forthcoming hybrid models will likely take about three and a half years, the same amount of time typically needed for conventional models, he said.
Toyota aims to have hybrid versions of all its car models by 2020 and sell a million hybrid vehicles a year. Carmakers are accelerating the introduction of new hybrid models as rising fuel prices and government incentives boost demand. Honda Motor Co. said last week it plans to sell a hybrid version of its Fit compact next fiscal year, earlier than an original plan.
Toyota can come out with new hybrids faster as it now has a new hybrid system for the current Prius with two motors that will be applied to future hybrid models, Otsuka said.
The automaker has an advantage over rivals, as the first Prius was introduced 12 years ago, giving it more than a decade's worth of data and customer feedback on over 1.27 million units sold, Otsuka said.
Honda sold just 666 units of its first-generation Insight in 2005 before discontinuing the model in 2006. It introduced the new Insight in February.
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