Toyota plans U.S. retail sales of Prius hybrid by '12

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest seller of hybrid autos, said it intends to begin offering plug-in versions of the Prius hatchback to U.S. consumers within three years.

"The target is 2012 to be coming to market with them," Irv Miller, a group vice president for Toyota's U.S. sales unit, said today at a conference in Los Angeles. Before that, "we're going to study the challenges of consumer demand," he said.

Toyota already plans to begin U.S. tests late this year on 150 Priuses with lithium-ion battery packs that can be recharged at electric outlets. The Toyota City, Japan-based automaker hadn't previously provided a tentative date for consumer sales.

Toyota joins Nissan Motor Co., General Motors Co., Daimler AG and startups such as Tesla Motors Co. in readying vehicles that run entirely or in part on electricity. Governments are pushing for such models to reduce gasoline use and trim emissions of carbon dioxide.

Unlike Nissan, which has said it expects to sell hundreds of thousands of Leaf battery cars within a few years, Toyota has said it's less certain of consumer readiness to buy vehicles that cost more and offer less range.

Toyota's wariness stems from consumer sales in California of its battery-powered RAV4 sport-utility vehicles early in this decade, Miller said.

"We had a lot of people raising their hands for the RAV4 EV," he said. "As soon as we made them ready for sale, that line evaporated very quickly."

Miller spoke at a panel discussion on advanced vehicles at a climate-change conference hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Toyota's U.S. sales unit is based in Torrance, California.