Toyota: Hybrids to be 20 percent of global market by 2020

FRANKFURT -- Hybrid vehicles -- including extended-range plug-in hybrids -- will account for 20 percent of all global vehicle sales in developing countries by 2020, Toyota's top engineer predicted Monday.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's executive vice president overseeing R&D and engineering, noted that hybrid sales are already 20 percent of annual sales in Japan, but that most of the developing world is at or below 10 percent hybrids.

He declined to say what Toyota's share of the hybrid pie would be. In the United States, Toyota's hybrid market share has been as high as 80 percent, though it has slid somewhat as new competitors have entered the market.

Toyota will continue to ramp up its hybrid presence in all markets, including the Prius V, Prius C and Prius Plug-In in the United States by the middle of next year. Also, the Camry Hybrid is expected to double its U.S. volume to about 50,000 units in 2012. In Europe, the redesigned Yaris will see a hybrid version for the first time, Uchiyamada told a roundtable of journalists prior to the auto show here.

As a result, Toyota is studying having suppliers outside Japan build hybrid components. The fragility of relying on a single source for key components was made clear when the Japanese supplier network was shattered by the March earthquake.

Uchiyamada said Toyota has not yet decided which U.S. suppliers to use for the job, but that Toyota is now beyond the time period when volumes are low enough that Japan-only supply suppliers were sufficient.

"We are entering a stage of possible local procurement," he said. "We need to do that to keep and increase our competitiveness."

Uchiyamada also predicted that electric vehicles will fall short of their hype.

"Based on the current data, the targets announced by other players show they are not on track," Uchiyamada said. "Compared to the target, it's pretty disappointing for them."