Toyota announced yesterday that sales of the world’s first mass produced gas/electric hybrid car has reached one million sales worldwide. The Toyota Prius brand is sold in 40 countries worldwide with actual sales of 1,028,000 as of April 30^th of this year. Most of the sales come from Japan and North America however Toyota is actively moving into emerging markets all over the world. Plus with gas prices at an all time high in the U.S. you can expect sales to increase quite a bit in my opinion.

The Toyota Prius debuted in 1997 for the Japanese market only and sold a whopping 300 vehicles. By the year 2000 Toyota started to sell the Prius on North America with sales reaching 19,000 units being sold worldwide for fiscal year 2000. Now we arrive in the first quarter 2008 and Toyota has sold 107,100 units so far this year. If trends continue at this pace Toyota will sell at least 400,000 this year alone. Of course this is all speculation by me because due to market trends and the United States economic downturn that we are experiencing right now Prius sales this year may slow down just a bit. For all we know Toyota may not sell another Prius the rest of the year (yea right).

Although the sale of 1 million Prius vehicles is exciting I think the more exciting news is the amount of CO2 that Toyota has saved the environment with the Prius hybrid technology. According to Toyota 4.5 million tons of CO2 have been kept out of our atmosphere due to the innovative hybrid technology that the Prius boasts. I think maybe Al Gore would be proud of the Prius for this accomplishment don’t you?

Total Prius Sales Worldwide:

2008 Toyota Prius

Source: [Toyota]