14 DAY TRIAL // It's been quite a while since the Toyota hybrids first made their appearance on the Japanese market, way back in 1997, and on the American continent, where people began to take a liking to them starting with the year 2000.
From that moment on, sales have steadily increased, and at the present moment the company is said to have successfully “hooked up” more than 4 million such environmentally-friendly vehicles with proud and happy owners worldwide.
Naturally, odds are that the situation wouldn't have been so “green” (both environmentally-wise and money-wise) if it hadn't been for Toyota's decision to expand its hybrid-cars family with models such as the Prius V, the Prius C and the Prius Plug-in, which really boosted up sales.
As earthtechling.com informs us, once these new models hit the American market, a total 60,859 Toyota hybrids were sold in the US alone, all within a period of time spanning from November 2011 to the first quarter of 2012.
Official reports released by company representatives indicate that, since the beginning of 2012 up until now, 15% of their overall sales involved various versions of the Prius hybrid.
Of course, skeptics might argue that this is due to the price of fuel going up, and not a direct result of people becoming increasingly aware of the need to help the environment and cut down on gas emissions.
However, truth be told, regardless of the reasons, plain results are the ones that really matter, and from this point of view Toyota seems to be doing a pretty good job: preliminary figures indicate a 26 million ton reduction of CO2 emission as a result of having so many hybrids roam the interstates.
What is particularly interesting is that American citizens seem to prefer these Asian hybrids to what their national car manufacturers have to offer. Thus, although Ford, the American multinational automaker, managed to boost its environmentally-friendly cars sales by 67% since 2011, it still seems to have quite a long way to go before being able to catch up with Toyota's performances in this area.
All in all, environmentalists throughout the globe salute the fact that real efforts are put into cleaning international carparks of fuel-powered vehicles, and that so many citizens are turning to green automobiles instead.