The Toyota Camry, the best-selling car in the United States, will become an exclusively hybrid model.
Currently, the vehicle is available in both hybrid and combustion engine versions.
But the 2025 Camry will only be offered as a hybrid car, meaning it combines a gasoline engine with electric motors.
The model will join others from Toyota - such as the Sienna minivan, Venza SUV, Sequoia SUV, Prius and others - that are produced only as hybrids.
The decision to go hybrid-only in the Camry shows how accepted the technology has become.
Once a novelty found only in some models, – and mainly of interest during peak fuel prices – the technology is becoming more popular.
So much so that Toyota - a company known for not taking big risks - feels customers are ready to embrace just the hybrid in this popular sedan.
“We’ve been putting electric motors and batteries in vehicles since the first Prius in 2000, so it’s a space we know and love,” said Mike Tripp, group vice president of marketing at Toyota, in an interview with CNN.
Toyota said it plans to offer a hybrid version of every vehicle in its lineup. There are only three Toyota models – the sports GR86 and Supra, and the SUV 4Runner – without a hybrid option or that do not have an announced hybrid version.
Making the Camry hybrid-only is a big step. The model has been the best-selling car – that is, one that is not a pickup truck or SUV – in the US for the last 22 years. Along with the Prius, it is probably the model most associated with the Toyota brand.
It has been available in hybrid form since 2007, but starting with the redesigned 2025 model, this will no longer just be an option.
Making such a popular model hybrid-only may have been a radical step for other automakers, but it's in keeping with Toyota's long history with the technology, said Tyson Jominy, an industrial analyst at JD Power.
“This is expected from Toyota,” he said. “I don’t think it’s really unconventional.”
The Prius was both avant-garde and a bit nerdy when it went on sale in the US in 2001.
It was one of the first hybrid cars sold here, and after a redesign a few years later, it became the first truly popular hybrid car. Toyota soon began adding the technology to other models.
In the two decades since the Prius launched, Toyota hybrids have become increasingly popular.
Even as vehicle prices in general have fallen in recent months, customers still pay up to 2.5% above the manufacturer's list price for Toyota's hybrid models, according to recent data from Edmunds.com.
This is true even though customers pay deeply discounted prices for all-electric vehicles, despite getting significant tax credits that are not available on most hybrids.
It's not that the electric vehicle (EV) market won't continue to grow, Jominy said. They are reaching about 9% of all new vehicle sales now.
Dealers are having to discount because there are simply too many electric cars available in a similar price range of about $50,000 to $60,000, he said.
Hybrids, in turn, are also easier for customers to understand, as the vehicles do not require any changes to the owner's regular habits, said Jominy. They do not need to be charged, just filled with gasoline, which consumes less.
“What's crazy to me is the demand for the Sienna, Corolla hybrid, the new Grand Highlander hybrid, we added hybrid in June of this year to the Corolla Cross, so yes, demand continues to outstrip supply at this point,” Tripp said.
Toyota has been much more cautious than other automakers when it comes to all-electric vehicles. The Japanese automaker offers just two in the United States, the BZ4X and the Lexus RZ 450e, both SUVs.
Toyota executives have long expressed skepticism about consumers' willingness to embrace all-electric vehicles. They also claim that hybrids are a more effective use of expensive batteries, in terms of effectively reducing the vehicles' overall carbon emissions.
More recently, the company said it plans to more aggressively adopt electric vehicles while continuing to grow its lineup of hybrid models.
The new Camry, like most of Toyota's other hybrid models, will not be a plug-in hybrid. Its four-cylinder engine, in addition to moving the car, will also charge batteries that will power two electric motors.
In total, this system will produce up to 225 horsepower on front-wheel drive models and 232 horsepower on all-wheel drive versions. As with other hybrids, the batteries will also charge as the car brakes.
In addition to revealing the new Camry on Tuesday (14), Toyota also revealed another new hybrid-only SUV model, the Crown Signia. It will be a sophisticated crossover SUV with all-wheel drive and style similar to Toyota's Crown sedan, only hybrid.
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