Green technology will be in the spotlight at the Tokyo Motor Show, which starts Wednesday, but the light will not shine on many automakers from outside Japan.
Toyota is banking on gasoline-electric hybrids and Nissan and Honda on fully electric cars as they jostle to dominate the next phase in green technology.
But the rest of the world is not going to be there. The show will be notable for a stark absence of non-Japanese car manufacturers, which are banking on China, not Japan, as Asia's next big auto market.
Toyota bolstered its hybrid lineup on Tuesday by introducing the Sai, its first hybrid-only model since its popular Prius, and said it intended to sell 3,000 a month in Japan starting Dec. 7.
Sai, which means "talent" or "color," is bigger and costlier than the Prius and will not be sold outside of Japan for now, Toyota said.
The Sai gets about 54 miles a gallon, double the mileage of a comparable gasoline-engine model but less than the Prius, according to the automaker.
Toyota's gas-electric hybrids, which switch between an electric motor and a gas engine for better mileage than conventional cars, have been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal year for Toyota.
They have also made the manufacturer a leader in green technology. The Prius has sold 1.4 million vehicles since its debut a decade ago.
Toyota expects to sell 500,000 to 600,000 hybrid vehicles globally this year.
Now, Toyota, after huge investments to get an edge in hybrids, wants the technology to dominate the eco-friendly car scene for many more years. It plans to introduce hybrid technology in all of its models by 2020 and to sell a plug-in hybrid, which can be recharged by connecting a plug to an external power outlet, later this year.
Toyota sees the plug-in hybrid as the next dominant auto technology for fuel-efficient cars.
"Plug-ins keep expensive batteries to a minimum and also solve the problems electric vehicles have with range," Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's executive vice president, said at an industry seminar in Tokyo. "We believe that plug-in hybrids represent the most realistic use of electric energy."
But Toyota is increasingly looking back as rivals play catch-up in hybrid technology — and may soon be racing to catch up to rivals that are taking the leap to all-electric vehicles.
Nissan, Japan's third-largest automaker, is one such competitor.
Nissan will start selling its Leaf electric car next year, an anomaly among carmakers putting resources into both electric cars and hybrids.
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