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N0KFQ > TODAY 17.05.14 17:02l 51 Lines 2330 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - May 17
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N0KFQ
Sent: 140517/1455Z 20716@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.60
May 17, 2005:
Toyota announces plans for hybrid Camry
On this day in 2005, Toyota Motor Company announces its plans to
produce a gasoline-electric hybrid version of its bestselling
Camry sedan. Built at the company's Georgetown, Kentucky, plant,
the Camry became Toyota's first hybrid model to be manufactured
in the United States.
Toyota introduced the Camry--the name is a phonetic transcription
of the Japanese word for "crown"--in the Japanese market in 1980;
it began selling in the United States the following year. By the
late 1980s and early 1990s, the success of the Camry and its
Japanese competitor, the Honda Accord, had allowed Toyota and
Honda to seize control of the midsize sedan market in the United
States. By then, Toyota had adapted the Camry more to American
tastes, increasing its size and replacing its original boxy
design with a smoother, more rounded style. By 2003, as Micheline
Maynard recorded in her book "The End of Detroit," apart from the
early-'90s success of the Ford Taurus, the Camry and Accord had
long maintained their position atop the list of the nation's
best-selling cars overall, each selling around 400,000 units per
year.
In 1997, Toyota's Prius--the world's first mass-produced
gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle--went on sale in Japan. It was
released worldwide in 2001. By using an electric motor to
supplement power from the gasoline, hybrid technology resulted in
greatly improved fuel efficiency and higher gas mileage. Honda
launched its own hybrid lineup with the Insight in 1999 and
continued with the hybrid Civic in 2002. By then, skyrocketing
gas prices had combined with a backlash against gas-guzzling
sport utility vehicles (SUVs) to make hybrids suddenly chic.
Eco-conscious Hollywood celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and
Cameron Diaz proudly drove their Priuses around Los Angeles, and
by 2003 Honda and Toyota were selling 50,000 hybrids a year in
the United States. The plans to develop a hybrid Camry, announced
in May 2005, brought the total number of Toyota-made hybrid
models to four, including the Prius; the Lexus RX 400h, a midsize
sport utility vehicle (SUV) released in April 2005; and a second
SUV, the Toyota Highlander, released that June.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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