Since Toyota, like other automakers doing business in the U.S., is currently unable to supply enough hybrids and other small fuel efficient cars to meet consumer demand, they are offering up other suggestions on how to conserve gas. Over on the Open Road blog, they have talked about hypermiling before but there is a solution that saves even more fuel and emissions. In a shocker for a car company, they actually suggest driving less.

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Toyota had an ad in Belgium that included the words "Zero emissions low." While the Prius is a model with very low CO₂ emissions, they're certainly not zero and the claim has been considered misleading. The advertisement did not contain any CO₂ emission or fuel consumption data, as is obliged under Belgian law, and thus violated European labeling directive 1999/94/EC. Friends of the Earth Europe's car efficiency campaigner, Jeroen Verhoeven, filed the complaint.

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Toyota has issued a clarification to reports earlier this week that it would introduce a third dedicated hybrid model in January at the Detroit Auto Show. At this year's show company president Katsuoko Watanabe announced that the company would bring two all new hybrid-only models to the 2009 show one each for Lexus and Toyota. That is all Toyota will unveil in Detroit. There will not be a third new hybrid. One of the new cars will be the new Prius. An additional model remains a possibility for introduction at some other show. This could either be a larger car or it might be the plug-in Prius that will debut in 2010 for fleet testing use.

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T.J. Donaghy runs a chauffeured car hire service in Orlando, Florida. It's one of those services that you can call up and a driver turns up at your door in a big black sedan to shuttle you around and you pay by the hour. The Lincoln Town Car has been the staple of such services for what seems like eons. In this age of $4+/gallon gas, Donaghy figured an alternative was in order, namely a Toyota Camry hybrid. Unfortunately for Donaghy, the way Orlando regulates such services is a bit overly bureaucratic.

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Toyota and Honda have battled it out as the greenest automaker these last few years pretty much no matter how you look at it. Honda may have beat Toyota to the hybrid punch with its inaugural Insight model, but there is no arguing that the Prius is the green car standard by which others are judged. Last year, Honda was anointed the Greenest Automaker by the Union of Concerned Scientists, partly because it boasted the highest average fuel efficiency of its entire fleet of cars. Could that status be in danger?

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Toyota wants to double worldwide sales of its hybrids to over 1 million units a year within the next decade and is adding production capacity to hep it get there. In Japan today, Toyota announced plans to add production of Camry hybrids at two more plants in Australia and Thailand. The Thai plant will start first with about 9,000 hybrids per year starting in 2009. At a press conference attended by both Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Toyota CEO Katsuaki Watanabe, plans were announced to build hybrids at the company's Altona plant near Melbourne. The plant will start turning out 10,000 hybrids a year in early 2010. The state of Victoria, where the plant is located, reportedly provided $35 million (AUS) in tax incentives to get Toyota add hybrid production.

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The three domestic automakers aren't the only ones feeling the pain of plummeting full-size pickup truck sales. Even Toyota Tundra sales were down 34 percent in May compared to last year. Sales of the Camry were down slightly due to supply constraints. The Camry, which has long been the top selling car in the U.S. market, lost out to the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla in May. The Princeton, Indiana plant that builds Tundras is running below capacity. Toyota is now considering adding production of the Camry to Princeton. The plant already builds Sienna minivans in addition to the trucks, so adding the sedans shouldn't be to difficult.

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Automotive times are a-changin, as fuel-efficient cars are now outselling trucks by a wide margin. Toyota's flexible manufacturing capabilities allow it to adjust to these crazy times, and the Japanese automaker is discussing a plan to build still more Camrys at its Indiana truck plant. The Princeton plant is only running two shifts right now, and its trucks and SUVs are suffering just as much as similar offerings coming out of Detroit.

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Automotive times are a-changin, as fuel-efficient cars are now outselling trucks by a wide margin. Toyota's flexible manufacturing capabilities allow it to adjust to these crazy times, and the Japanese automaker is discussing a plan to build still more Camrys at its Indiana truck plant. The Princeton plant is only running two shifts right now, and its trucks and SUVs are suffering just as much as similar offerings coming out of Detroit. That makes the plant a great fit for the Camry, which sold an astonishing 51,291 units last month.

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We've been hearing about the third-generation Toyota Prius for a very long time, and we're really looking forward to seeing it in person at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, where we are expecting its official debut to take place. What we don't know, however, is when the model will actually go on sale. A preliminary hint comes courtesy of Korea, as an un-named Toyota of Korea source is quoted as suggesting that the next-gen Prius will get an official launch in April of 2009 in the United States, Japan and Korea.

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Over at the Toyota Open Road blog, Toyota's American Communications boss Irv Miller has a new post talking about hybrid battery supplies. As we reported yesterday, May sales of the Prius were down 40 percent compared to the previous May. It's not because people suddenly didn't want Priuses anymore, especially with gas at $4/gallon. In fact exactly the opposite is true. So many people have wanted Priuses through the first four months of the year, that there simply weren't any more to be had. Those 15,000 units Toyota sold were basically all the cars that were left.

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AutoExpress may have provided us with a rendering of what the new RWD Subaru coupe might look like, but Winding Road's hired spies have provided the real deal. Shot outside a test center in the UK (amidst white-out conditions), the camo-clad mule is sporting some body panels pilfered from the current Legacy, but with a Toyota emblem in front, a pair of Recaro buckets inside and a shrunken trunk, there's little doubt that this prototype is more than just your standard sedan.

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Toyota has been offering a large car known as the Crown in Japan for many years, and it often gets flagship-level technology which floats down to lower models in time. Recently, the Crown got the same parallel hybrid drivetrain which is offered in the Lexus LS600h.

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The styrofoam hamburger container shape of the Toyota Prius elicits a lot of responses, good and bad. But when was the last time you saw one and thought, "wow"? Back when the hybrid was introduced, amazement might have been a common reaction, but we've seen the Prius in the U.S. for eight years already. What could possibly make us excited about the car now (well, aside from the high gas mileage). Toyota North America's head of product planning Mike O'Brien has been thinking about ways to bring the wow back to the Prius, and it all revolves around a plug.

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If Toyota has any chance of meeting its stated goal of selling a million hybrids per year within the next decade, it's going to need lots and lots of batteries. Along with its partner, Matsushita, Toyota already has plants in operation to build the necessary nickel metal hydride battery packs, and one of those plants will be enlarged in order to meet capacity requirements. Two additional plants will also be built in Japan, one of which will begin production of the newer lithium ion batteries which are likely to be installed in future Lexus hybrids and Prius sedans. Toyota's full investment in these three battery plants is said to be roughly 20 billion yen, which is equal to 192 million dollars.

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