Toyota – A Brief Historical Retrospect – Toyota began selling cars in Japan in 1936 and the Model AA was initially built as their first passenger automobile.

Responding to harsh import tariffs on selected autos, Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. started constructing facilities in the US in the early eighties.

In 1982, Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged to form one enterprise, the Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyota has since established innovative brands and launched their own luxury division, Lexus in 1989.

As part of a comprehensive marketing strategy in the 1990s, Toyota started to branch out from manufacturing primarily compact cars. The company added numerous more substantial and luxurious cars to its lineup. These included a full-sized pickup, the T100 (and later the Tundra), several model lines of SUVs, and a sporty edition of the highly popular Camry, which was known as the Camry Solara.

Additionally, the Scion brand was launched, which was dedicated to designing and building a number of various affordable, yet sporty, automobiles targeted specifically at the young adult market. Toyota also took the lead and began production of the world’s best-selling hybrid car, the Prius, in 1997.

Currently, Toyota officially lists approximately 70 different models which are sold under its nameplate. These include a wide variety of sedans, coupes, vans, trucks, hybrids, and crossovers. Several of these models are produced entirely as passenger sedans that range from the subcompact Yaris, compact Corolla, mid-size Camry, and full-size Avalon. Vans produced include the Previa/Estima, Sienna, among others. Numerous small cars, like the xB and tC, are sold under the Scion brand.

Toyota has established itself as one of the largest manufacturers in the world to promote hybrid vehicles in the market, and they are the first such car maker to commercially mass-produce and sell such vehicles, an example of which is the Prius.

Toyota is presently testing its “Toyota Plug-in HV” in Japan, the United States, and Europe. Similar to GM’s Volt, it utilizes a lithium-ion battery pack. However unlike the Volt, it is able to run on gasoline or electric engine alone.

Toyota is accelerating the growth and development of vehicles that are able to run on only electricity, with an objective of mass-producing them on a wide scale and within this decade. Road testing for the most recent prototype, known as “e-com”, had ended in 2006. Toyota has created several concept electric powered vehicles, like the FT-EV and FT-EV II.f

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