It's no small thing to get consumers to understand, let alone embrace, a new and peculiar type of automobile. But a little more good-faith effort would help.
In a market that's tilted 70-30 toward light trucks, why does Toyota bother to invest in cars? Because in that smaller market, Toyota is a giant. And it has even more elbow room now that the Detroit 3 have decided to vacate several car segments.
Toyota, which introduced the world to gasoline-electric hybrids some 15 years ago, is exploring some new branding language for its alternative powertrains to better convey the nuances of the technologies and the vehicles' evolving driving dynamics.
In a market that's tilted 70-30 toward light trucks, why does Toyota bother to invest in cars? Because in that smaller market, Toyota is a giant. And it has even more elbow room now that the Detroit 3 have decided to vacate several car segments.
Hits and misses from the floor of the Los Angeles Auto Show.
Toyota's RAV4, already the best-selling nonpickup in the nation, will get a big marketing push with a Super Bowl ad in February.
Lexus is in no rush to embrace a vehicle subscription program at the brand level, but it sees the all-inclusive short-team lease as a format that could be expanded to other models in the lineup.
The addition of an all-wheel-drive Prius and a hybrid Corolla reflect Toyota's search for niches and frontiers where it can generate incremental volume and higher profits from its core car models.
The redesigned Corolla must prove it can deliver more stability and power to Toyota's U.S. car sales, which are down 11 percent this year.
Small cars, hybrids and crossovers lifted South Korea's Hyundai-Kia group to a narrow 0.7 percent U.S. sales increase in October. Genesis was no help.