Toyota Motor Europe (TME) said it was seeing a sharp increase in its existing hybrid sales so far this year: up 45% versus 2015 which was already a record year. It launches three new models at the Paris show.
"We're on track to sell close to 300,000 hybrids this year," said Karl Schlicht, executive vice president of TME. "That is a new record for us and positions Toyota and Lexus as leaders in electrification."
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The company plans to achieve more than 900,000 total sales in greater Europe this year, with a third of those being hybrid.
"This really shows that hybrids are what customers want right now – which is a great reward for having invested so early in powertrain electrification," Schlicht said.
Toyota Motor Europe started commercialising hybrids in 2000 with the first generation Prius. To date, 1.5m hybrids of both brands have been sold on the continent. Europe is Toyota's fastest-growing region worldwide for hybrid sales.
Toyota's target is to reach 50% of its European sales with hybrid vehicles by 2020, with a hybrid version in every major market segment.
Amongst the most popular Toyota hybrid models are the C-segment Auris (57,884 sales from January to August), the B-segment Yaris (55,611), and the recently launched RAV4 (25,909) sport-utility vehicle.
Toyota sells seven hybrid models in Europe and is introducing an eighth hybrid at the end of this year, the new C-HR C-segment crossover.
"Our retailers are extremely excited about C-HR," claimed Schlicht. "We started taking orders this month and are very confident this new entry in the growing cross-over segment will further help grow our sales into 2017. From what we can see so far, nearly 70% of customers will choose the hybrid version."
The new Prius Plug-In is said to be "another big step over the previous generation" [which was notorious for poor electric-only range, ed] which was the first plug-in hybrid on the market worldwide when it launched in 2012. The new one offers a claimed pure-electric range of "more than 50 km" (30 miles) and a fuel consumption of one litre per 100 km (22g of CO2/km) (NEDC).
Total Lexus hybrid sales were 28,782 over the January-August 2016 period.
Lexus sells seven hybrids in Europe and the eighth model has been announced and will start sales in mid-2017: the LC500h coupe with new multi-stage hybrid system.
Lexus' best sellers in Europe are the NX 00h (10,936), the RX450h (6,052) and the CT200h (5,519).
