Toyota to built hybrid at Thailand & Australia

Proton complete it's prototype electric car jv with Lotus - Detroit Electric on august. The car can accelerated maximum 80km/h. The Li-Ion power was drove by Pak Lah around Putrajaya for test drive. Original news from Business Times

Toyota to build Camry hybrids in Thailand, Australia

Published: 2008/06/11

NAGOYA: Toyota Motor Corp will start assembling its Camry hybrid cars in Thailand and Australia over the next two years in its latest effort to popularise such fuel-efficient vehicles.Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker and a pioneer of gasoline-electric hybrid cars, said yesterday it will begin production at its Gateway plant in the Thai province of Chachoengsao, 110km southeast of Bangkok, in 2009.It aims to produce 9,000 vehicles per year at the plant.At its Australian factory, it plans a production start in early 2010 and aims to produce and sell 10,000 a year.
With fuel prices hitting record highs around the world, automakers are racing to offer fuel-efficient alternatives such as pure electric and ethanol-fuelled cars. To reach its target of selling 1 million hybrid cars a year in the early part of the next decade, Toyota will need to more than double production of the vehicles.“We decided to build the Camry hybrid in Australia because Australians are keenly aware of environmental issues including global warming,” Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told a news conference in Nagoya, central Japan, attended by visiting Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.Rudd, whose government has allocated A$500 million towards the Green Car Innovation Fund to encourage development of low-emissions vehicles, said Toyota would get A$35 million in grants for Camry hybrid production.Australia had been looking to host production of hybrid cars for about a year to ease the pressure of rising fuel costs and global warming, he said.Toyota will assemble the Camry hybrid with imported hybrid modules at its 150,000 vehicles-a-year Altona factory in the suburbs of Melbourne. The plant, which builds the Camry sedan and the Aurion sister model, produced 149,000 vehicles last year, two-thirds of which were exported to the Middle East. - Reuters