CNN
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Toyota Camry, America’s best-selling car, will only become a hybrid.
The Camry is available in a hybrid version now, but the redesigned 2025 Camry will only be offered as a hybrid vehicle that combines a gasoline engine and electric motors.
It will join a number of other Toyota models, such as the Sienna minivan, Venza SUV, and full-size Sequoia. SUVs and others are only available as hybrids. Of course, there’s still the Prius.
The decision to switch to a hybrid-only system in the Camry indicates the acceptance of this technology. Once a novelty found in only a few models — often interesting during high gas prices — it is becoming more widespread. So much so that Toyota, a company not known for taking big risks, feels customers are only willing to go hybrid in this mainstream sedan.
“We’ve been putting electric motors and batteries in cars since the first Prius in 2000, so it’s a space we know and love,” Mike Tripp, vice president of Toyota’s marketing group, said in an interview with CNN.
Toyota said it plans to offer a hybrid version of every car in its range. There are only three Toyota models – the 86 and Supra SUVs, and the 4Runner SUV – without a hybrid option. Or for which a hybrid version has not been announced.
Making a hybrid-only Camry is a big step. The Camry has been the best-selling vehicle — that is, not a truck or an SUV — in America for the past 22 years. Along with the Prius, it is probably the model most closely associated with the Toyota brand.
It’s been available in a hybrid version since 2007, but starting with the redesigned 2025 model, that won’t just be an option.
Such a popular model is made only by hybrid It may have been a radical move for other automakers, but it was in line with Toyota’s long history with the technology, said Tyson Jomini, an industry analyst at J.D. Power.
“It is expected from Toyota,” he said. “I don’t think it’s really unconventional.”
The Prius was both cutting edge and kind of cool when it went on sale in the United States in 2001.
It was one of the first hybrids sold here, and after being redesigned a few years later, it became the first hybrid car to become very popular. Toyota soon began adding this technology to other models.
In the past two decades since the Prius appeared, Toyota hybrid cars have proven to be very popular. Even as overall car prices have fallen in recent months, customers are still paying up to 2.5% above the manufacturer’s sticker price for Toyota’s hybrid models, according to recent data from Edmunds.com.
This applies even when customers pay deeply discounted prices for fully electric vehicles, despite receiving significant tax breaks not available on most hybrids.
But that doesn’t mean the electric vehicle market doesn’t continue to grow, Jomini said. They’re up to about 9% of all new car sales now. Dealers are forced to discount, he said, because there are simply too many electric vehicles available in a similar price range of $50,000 to $60,000.
Toyota
Toyota Crown Signia is a new hybrid-only SUV.
Meanwhile, hybrids are much easier for customers to understand, as the vehicles require no change in the owner’s usual habits, Jomini said. They don’t need to be charged, they just fill with gasoline, which they use less.
“What’s crazy to me, the demand for the Sienna, the demand for the Corolla Hybrid, the demand for the new Grand Highlander Hybrid, we added the hybrid in June of this year to the Corolla Cross, so yeah, demand continues to outpace supply at this point,” Tripp said. . .
Toyota has been very much More cautious than other automakers when it comes to all-electric cars. Toyota offers only two vehicles in the United States, the BZ4X and the Lexus RZ 450e, both of which are SUVs. Toyota executives have long expressed doubts about consumers’ willingness to embrace all-electric vehicles. They also said hybrid cars are a more efficient use of expensive batteries, in terms of reducing overall carbon emissions from vehicles. More recently, the company said it plans to pursue electric vehicles more aggressively while continuing to develop its range of hybrid models.
The new Camry, like most other Toyota hybrid models, will not be a plug-in hybrid. Its four-cylinder engine, in addition to driving the car, will charge the batteries that will power two electric motors. Together, this system will produce up to 225 horsepower in front-wheel drive models and 232 horsepower in all-wheel drive models. As with other hybrid cars, the batteries will also be charged while the car is braking.
Along with unveiling the new Camry on Tuesday night, Toyota also revealed another new hybrid-only SUV model, the Crown Signia. It will be an upscale crossover SUV with styling similar to Toyota’s hybrid-only Crown sedan.
