Toyota Hybrid Cars and Legal Issues

Toyota has hit the headlines over the years over the defects in several of their models which has sent it on a public relations and safety campaigns relating to its vehicles. Notably is the Toyota safety campaign in North America for certain models of Toyota as well as Lexus brands concerning the floor mat entrapment of accelerator pedals, later on it extended to other models in November 2009.

Hybrids also have improved aerodynamics and use low rolling resistance tyres to reduce the friction experienced by the vehicle (Nice & Layton 2000).

Yet, the public perceptions may be at odds with the objective measures. In Toyota’s case, there have been indications that the quality level of the company’s products had fallen off in a span of few years. There are changes that have taken place during a period when most of the company’s close competitors, such as Fords, were producing more cost-effective and efficient automobiles. In addition, the company’s unique production approach and the emphasis on continuous improvement and learning coupled with a matrix structure are key reasons for the company’s leadership in the cat manufacturing industry. Toyota’s Production Systems (TPS) was founded in the principles of “Just-in-time. This approach has less opportunity for slack resources and focuses of the benefits of efficiency on the part of employees and reduction on waste resources (Griffin and Gregory, 5). Further, Toyota Company enacts its production system with the assistance of its human resources strategies, culture, and organizational structure. Toyota’s Production System emphasizes on learning and modesty when it comes to assessing past success and differentiated them from

Although Toyota invented this new hybrid vehicle more than ten years ago, it did not offer the car to the USA consumers immediately. The main reason was that Toyota was aware of the new technology challenges. While Toyota was on the market research and new product development, other companies were focusing on merger and acquisition. Brand recognition, technology changes and improvement take several years to finish and Toyota wanted to launch a product which has cleared all the possible obstacles such as space, efficiency, speed, safety, weight which can meet all consumers ' expectations.

The American auto makers have already invested billions of dollars in new technology. Every year at the major automobiles shows new concept cars are unveiled as each auto maker seeks to drum up consumer interest along with domestic and international investment. The U.S. government with a stated goal of reducing the dependence on oil has called for companies to put one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 (D.O.E 2011). General Motors and Ford have already invested in hybrids and GM’s Chevy volt is already a top selling electric car. GM has invested a lot of money in hydrogen fuel cell technology and according to CEPGI (2014) General Motors has the all-time lead in fuel patents between 2002 and 2012. According to GM News (2013) “GM’s fuel cell test fleet has accumulated nearly 3 million miles, more than any other automaker”. General Motors has also entered into deal with Honda Motor to produce newer generations of fuel cells. GM is targeting 2020 as a launch date and is happy to allow Toyota to take the lead in launching hydrogen fuel cell cars. GM’s rationale is that Toyota will spend money to advertise and debut the

For a few decades, pollution has become an emergent hazard to the Earth. To solve that problem, human have been putting a great effort into filtering atmosphere, cleaning wastes from industrial factories, and making things greener. Waste from transportation is one of the most serious effects on environmental problems. It appears that scientists are searching for alternative fuels and evolutions in automotive industry, which must satisfy energy requirements and offer, at least, same performance compared to conventional car. The automotive industry, therefore, has turned to a new project, which is called hybrid transportation. This proposal presents how hybrid cars have developed and how that technology works in order to protect environment and save expenditure on fuel economy. Also, this will consider positive side of hybrid vehicle technology and its integration into society.

The increasing sales numbers are encouraging, but must be viewed in the context of the overall car market. The 100,000 hybrid car sales in 2004 represent about one-half of one percent of the 17 million new cars sold this year. If every new hybrid driver effectively (and optimistically) doubled fuel economy from 20

Hybrid vehicles are slowly gaining popularity despite American car company 's failure to utilize the hybrid engine. During rush hours and heavy traffic, when vehicles are gaining most of their use, the hybrid engine helps reduce cost and maintain environmental health. American automotive companies need to start utilizing hybrid engines rather than normal gasoline-fueled engines by making hybrid engines the automotive standard.

As prices increase demand inherently falls creating room for alternative products to step in. “16% of Prius buyers stated that the primary reason for buying the Prius was to save money on gas.”(inflationdata.com). The fact that a meaningful number of people can reasonably expect for their hybrid purchase to save them money is perhaps the most important indicator for future hybrid

Generally, hybridizing a vehicle means adding an alternative propulsion component and a storage device to the conventional drive train and fuel tank. Many types of propulsion and storage devices have been investigated, such as electric, hydraulic, pneumatic or mechanical flywheels. Being able to capture braking energy and store it, in order to reuse it when needed, is a very beneficial feature especially in heavy duty applications, due to large mass associated with them, and so reusing significant amounts of braking energy. The electro-chemical storage battery was the primary choice of automotive hybrid power train designers, but since the power that flows through the hybrid assisting system can be very high in heavy duty vehicles cases, hydro-pneumatic propulsion and storage components became very attractive for that kind of application,

A number of hybrid vehicles have been built and tested since 1980. Some of these vehicles have impressed analysts with their performance and low levels of exhaust and petroleum consumption. Interest in hybrid vehicles jumped in late 1993 with the announcement of funding for

Hybrid electric vehicle is vehicle that uses 2 methods to propel which are internal combustion engine and electric motor. Most hybrid vehicles use high voltage battery pack and combination of electric motor and generator to help a gasoline engine. There are 3 types of HEV designs which are series, parallel and series-parallel designs. While levels of hybrid vehicles are including full-hybrid, medium-hybrid and mild hybrid. For full hybrids such as Toyota Prius, they have idle-stop function and regenerative braking features. They are mostly capable of using electric motor which assists the engine alone to run the vehicle. The battery voltages are about 200 to 300 Volts. For medium hybrids such as Citroen C4 HDi, its features are the same as full hybrids but they are mostly not capable of using electric motor alone and its battery voltages are around 144-158V. For mild hybrid, it has regenerative braking and idle-stop function but not capable of using electric motor to run. Its systems are

Automotive hybrid technology became successful in the 1990s when the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius became available. These vehicles have a direct linkage from the internal combustion engine to the driven wheels, so the engine can provide acceleration power. The 2000s saw development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which can be recharged from the electrical power grid and don't require conventional fuel for short

Because of these factors automakers have been attempting to design electric automobiles for a number of years. Electric-only vehicles suffer from the problems of lack of battery life, poor acceleration and speed, limited driving distance, and high cost compared to their better-performing gasoline counterparts. As a result, efforts to market purely electric

Thus far, our product strategy of successively expanding our model range, from smaller cars to luxury sedans, full-sized pickup trucks, large SUVs, and crossover vehicles has proved successful. In a bid to further extend our customer base, we have established the Scion marketing group, which will develop a range of vehicles targeting young, first-time car buyers. With respect to environmental issues, Toyota’s hybrid automobile Prius, which was introduced to the North American market in 2000, has been extremely well received and development is under way to launch our next-generation hybrid car. The Company intends to