Toyota Motor Corporation has triumphantly announced today that global sales of the Prius, “first great hybrid car”, has reached one million units.

The precise figures, calculated at the end of the first quarter 2008, passes 1,028,000 cars sold in 40 countries with a significant share going to Japan and the United States. Toyota calculates that the Prius sold have contributed to cuts in total CO2 emissions that amount to 4.5 million tonnes compared to what would have occurred with petrol cars of the same class.

The first Prius series was launched in Japan in 1997 and then in 2000 in the US and Europe. The current model comes from 2003, and since 2005 has also been produced in China, in the Changchun plant. In the course of the next year, Toyota expects to introduce the Prius also to South Korea as part of a global market expansion in hybrids, of which the company intends to sell one million a year as of the next decade.

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More than batteries and hybrids: for the third millenium we’re still in high seas for fuel sources. Or at least this is as much reported by the British publication the Sunday Times, in which a Toyota Prius and a BMW Series 520d were put to a long highway test. And the results are surprising.

Everything stemmed from some readers notes who sustain that the consumption declared by the Japanese company is 15 miles per gallon (six km per litre) higher than comparable values on the road. And at this point the experiment took off.

The test was conducted on the road from London to Geneva, taking in nearly 700km of highway and more than 150km of urban and suburban roads. Although we need to admit that high speed cruising penalises hybrid cars, and the German car weighs 230kg more, the comparison was quite stark.

Continue reading: The Bmw 520d challenges the Toyota Prius on consumption: are the results given?

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