Toyota unveils bold new environmental targets
With the aim of contributing to global environmental sustainability, Toyota has developed an ambitious set of goals to be achieved over the next 35 years.
Addressing key global environmental issues such as climate change, water shortages, resource depletion, and degradation of biodiversity, the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050 aims to reduce the negative impact of manufacturing and driving vehicles as much as possible. The challenge is composed of six individual challenges across three areas: Ever-better cars, ever-better manufacturing, and enriching lives of communities.
In addition, as a key step toward achieving these long-term targets, Toyota is announcing its Sixth Toyota Environmental Action Plan, which will be enacted between April 2016 and the end of March 2021.
The plans reveal that Toyota’s aim is to sell more than 30,000 fuel cell vehicles around or after 2020, and that it would use renewable energy and hydrogen-based production methods at its factories to completely eliminate CO2 emissions by 2050.
Unveiling new environmental targets, Toyota also said it planned to sell 1.5 million hybrid vehicles annually by 2020 as the maker of the Prius, the world’s top-selling hybrid car, pushes to further popularize its line-up of fuel-efficient vehicles.
Toyota on Tuesday confirmed that its new Prius hybrid would be a fifth more fuel-efficient than its predecessor as the automaker hopes to boost sales of the environmentally friendly model amid a slump in global gas prices.
The plans to eliminate CO2 emissions, includes materials, parts and manufacturing, from the vehicle lifecycle. The Japanese firm aims to cut the total vehicle lifecycle CO2 emissions, including materials, parts and manufacturing. Toyota also plans on developing, designing and using low-CO2 materials; reducing the amount of material and the number of parts used in order to cut overall CO2 emissions involved in manufacturing materials and using recycled bio-materials more widely and designing vehicles for easy disassembly.
Toyota’s bold plans also include recycling programs and end-of-life vehicle treatment and recycling technologies developed in Japan by establishing two recycling projects in 2016.
It aims to do this by using resources more efficiently; by using eco-materials, using parts for longer, improving recycling technologies, and building cars from end-of-life vehicles.
As part of this strategy Toyota will also be promoting the global rollout of end-of-life vehicle treatment and recycling technologies developed in Japan by establishing two projects
- Toyota Global 100 Dismantlers Project
Safe and eco-friendly automobile dismantling facilities certified by Toyota will be established around the world for the development of a scheme that optimizes collection and processing of resources from end-of-life vehicles. The first facility was a joint venture established in Beijing in 2014.
- Toyota Global Car-to-Car Recycle Project
Recycling technologies and systems developed in Japan will be rolled out globally, turning end-of-life vehicles back into useful resources for the production of vehicles.
Toyota Motor Europe (TME) also announced today third quarter sales of 211,100 Toyota and Lexus vehicles, bringing the January-September total sales to 662,000 units and the group’s market share to 4.7% for the nine-month period. TME sales results were driven mainly by the increase of sales in Western Europe (+9%) and Central Europe (+10%). Toyota and Lexus combined market share in Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Caucasus) increased by 0.1 % points year-on-year to 7.8% in a decreasing market (-35%).
Sales of Toyota and Lexus hybrid models reached 152,000 units during the same period, making up to almost one quarter of the total sales for the whole Europe, and one third of sales in Western Europe.
The progression of hybrid sales for both brands for the first nine months of the year stands at 16% year-on-year, confirming the popularity of the alternative powertrain on the European market. Toyota and Lexus hybrid sales, which stood at 70,000 in 2010, will surpass 200,000 units this year.