The cars will still be dull and uninspiring. The real question for toyota is can you make cars people don’t mind being seen in before 2020?

be still, my heart

I don’t see the point in adding the Diesel option in the Tundra as it’s been proving to be quality nightmare for them with 8 recalls on the tundra alone, putting the diesel option in the camry, or Sienna would be more smart as those are higher volume cars they sell, not to mention it would be the first minivan with that option.

How about investing in a decent design team instead of the bunch of Voltron obsessed teenagers that have been at work.
You promised us a F1 one win like 3 years ago,still waiting.

Toyota is the only force keeping GM and Ford from irrelevancy. If they weren’t being pressured by announcements like this they’d still be trying to force-feed us V8 Excursions and whining that more efficient vehicles would bankrupt them and kill us all.

Toyota pressure is saving Detroit.

Toyota had Lobbyists on both sides of this bill. Thats right they were fighting themselves, so either way they were winning.

Clean diesel options for the Yaris, Carolla, and Matrix please. If VW can get 62mpg with their Polo diesel, Toyota can easily do it with the Yaris.

CELLULOSIC ETHANOL… HOW MUCH? TO POWER 1/10TH OF THE SCHOOL BUSES IN MIAMI?

autonut,

What GM realized is that a pickup-truck (which accounts for a large chunk of your business) can’t achieve 35mpg and still be powerful and good at what it does. Silverado is their lifeforce and they can’t afford to lose it. Toyota doesn’t need Tundra.

So let the market decide. GM only sells V8 trucks because people BUY them. They aren’t force feeding us these things. Quite the opposite. They scrambled to up production of them in the 90s. Even the hated Excursion is a response to GM’s success with Suburban. Ford didn’t force anybody to buy it, they simply tried to compete with GM.

Also you folks act as if GM and Ford are one company. They aren’t. GM is a competitor with Ford as much as with Toyota. In the old days if you hated your Chevy you didn’t automatically discount Fords and Dodges because of it. Quite the opposite you bought a Ford or Dodge.

Pickups and vans should be excluded from the 35 mpg CAFE rating(Not SUV’s), which nobody realistically buys for work purposes. That will be the compromise. That’s almost what’s going to have to happen, and almost certainly will.

TomF: while I don’t disagree, it is a one sided view of things. No one told Toyota to come here and build Tundras and Sequoias; they did so because of pressure from the big three, and the volume of those class of vehicles they were selling.

If Toyota did pressure Detroit into anything it had to do with quality. And now, it seems, their advantage is being reversed in Toyota’s all consuming effort just to build more cars than anyone else.

Where I do completely agree with you and autonut is I’m tired of hearing Detroit whine everytime the wind shifts.

TESTING plug-in hybrids by 2010? What about all the assurances from the Toyotaphiles that Toyota was WAAAY ahead of the Volt in plug-in development?

Ok so we have the little green men from outter space and I suspect you have a theory on JFK as well. For us in the real world I am beginning to wonder who is drinking the kool-aid. I don’t see any plug in hybrids at this time. I see lots of companies talking about them but I don’t see them.

LP640 if all you can do is log on and cuss at us don’t bother logging in.

There is very simple solution for work pickups production or their thirst issue and it is already implemented. It called free enterprise. If a business, i.e. construction worker/subcontractor, plumber or electrician charges more for his services as price of fuel and cost of equipment goes up. I had no heat for a day during the coldest day of January and utility company was slow with overload, the local HVAC guy want $90 for emergency call and $180 per hour for labor on top. In 10 minutes he makes $270. He CAN afford higher price of vehicle, gas guzzler tax and 3.25 gallon of gas for 10 mpg van. In case of “my guy” it was Dodge Sprinter with near 30 mpg on highway. I am not fan of Sprinter/Benz but why GM cant produce diesel version of pickups? Diesels have great torque and even with gas V8 pickups don’t exactly fly and why working implement has to fly? And majority of SUVs I’ve seen are driven with most 1 passenger.
This standard isn’t that tough. GM can achieve it easily and it will not hurt economy or GM. I am pissed of at Lutz for always wining about practically everything instead of looking and getting the best talent to achieve the goals. One of the goals is to meet or beet CAFE and produce vehicles people will enjoy to drive. Simple enough.

Great post, Tom. No qualifyiers.
I get the feeling that Toyota needed to have a year like 2007, and it was a successful year. Prius dominated. Camry set records. Corolla sold over 50k one month. Tundra kicked tail left and right, recalls or not, we all know it. Lexus, on and on.
Now Toyota, from the noise GM is making, and the media riding them, and Consumer Reports, Watanabe seemed a little annoyed, and now they may have a chip on their shoulder.
Toyota has had almost 2 decades straight of quiet, consistent excellence, and now they reach for the brass ring, and everybody wants to cut them down.
Toyota knows that when they hit with lithium-ion it will be big, so they don’t want to even think about an outsource company selling secrets. We’ll get it done, and we’ll know everything!
2007 was a successful year for Toyota, but also a wake-up call. Not only are they awake. I think they’re pissed. And model year 2010, we will see Toyota hit some home runs.
Tundra deisel. Prius redesign. New Hybrids for Toyota and Lexus. LF-A.
Toyota is planning on opening a HUGE can of whupass 2 years from now.
GM is having a little reniassance, and that’s good. But they are the Giants. A feel good story.
Toyota is the Patriots.
And Belichik is in a foul mood.
Show them disrespect, and you will suffer for it.
Write it down.
DrFill

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse in here, now we get these 2 idiots posting away. Will you both just STFU?

Hahaha….riiight. And Toy Ota will still be seen as the #1 POS car maker. So what else is new?

‘Deanster’ comes in and shuts ‘em down. Ignore ‘Limp Penis’ … he’s worthless.

GM meanwhile claims future cars will need to be built out of cardboard and pedal-powered to meet the rules. And they wonder why the Japanese keep eating into their sales..

After reading all the responses, “What was this thread about?”

Impulsive, I know, this guy LP is hopeless. Some of the bluntest, most unrefined insulting I have ever seen. Shameful. Our standards on LLN are higher than that….

Why don’t you all just STOP responding to him?

Love it, ‘Deanster’.

‘Weks’, add ‘Poisonous’, ‘V2′ and ‘rockstar’ to the ‘Limp Penis’ list of IGNORE.

We can and should let the market decides but I still cringe at the thought of my consumers (mostly the oil companies) requesting some of the cheapest most polluting truck models including Toyota’s. Heck they’re using them in some of the most pristine protected natural parks.

Toyota talking smack again. If they were developing the new battery “in house,” then Panasonic wouldn’t be involved. They speak forked tongue.

I still think these plug-in hybrids, and electric cars in general are going to cause more problems than they solve for many people in the U.S. For example, in the NYC metro area, the electric power grid can’t even handle peak demand on a hot summer day with everyone’s A/C’s running, and you get rolling blackouts and brown outs, tranformer fires, etc. The infrastructure is old and maxed out as it is. Now you’re going to have thousands of people plugging their electric and hybrid cars into this grid? The demand for electricity will overwhelm the system. Then there will be a big scramble to update the grid, at a HUGE cost, driving up electric rates and costing everyone more. Watch it happen. You heard it here first.

I have no idea what kind of condition the NYC Metro areas electric power gird is nor how much power a plug in hybrid (or plug in otherwise) car draws, but Mr Z06 might just have a point.

Z06 has a very good point. There is a huge controversy in my area becasue they want to run power lines through my town (in a scenic/recreational area) to get more power to NYC. We don’t want it – NIMBY!

That said, plugging the car in overnight would reduce the daily burden, but not by that much. And ironically, inner cities are where Hybrids are most useful.

Unless they put a decent diesel in a Corolla, and get Torque /MPG, similar to the upcoming ‘09 Jetta…forget it.

‘Z06ified’, the grid is looooooong overdue for rehab.

To add to this, electricity cost should be at least 30%-40% less between midnight and 6am … and demand is maybe 40%-50% less between those same times. I don’t think recharging vehicles at these times will place any strain on the grid.