Toyota's worst kept secret, Australian production of the Camry Hybrid from 2010, was officially confirmed this morning.
In a joint announcement at Toyota's Altona plant, Toyota Australia boss, Max Yasuda and Victorian Premier, John Brumby confirmed local production of the electrified mid-sizer would commence in early 2010.
The announcement was concurrent with a similar soiree in Japan involving Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and Toyota's global head, Katsuaki Watanabe, at Toyota's headquarters at Nagoya.
Around 10,000 Camry Hybrids will be built per year at the Victorian plant. On current registrations, this would constitute up to 20 per cent of total local Camry and Aurion volumes.
"I am very pleased that hybrid manufacturing is coming to Australia," Yasuda-san said this morning.
"This decision is the result of a major study that began last year to determine the feasibility of making a hybrid vehicle in Australia."
Premier Brumby said the announcement was the culmination of discussions that reached a formal stage in only January of this year. According to Toyota, the decision to push ahead with the local production plans was only signed off in late May.
Brumby described the Toyota hybrid announcement as "a very historic day".
"This is a green letter day," said Brumby.
"It [The Toyota announcement] marks the start of an exciting new era in our automotive industry. This is the sort of threshold announcment that sets our [automotive] industry on the road to the future," he enthused.
Altona's full hybrid production will be consumed locally, Toyota says -- there are no plans to export hybrid Camrys from Australia.
The Altona plant is officially the third Toyota plant to be given the go ahead to produce the hybrid version of the car. Currently the Camry Hybrid is built in Japan and the USA only. Announcements regarding the company's plans to produce hybrids in Thailand are expected later today, however (see below).
Around 17,000 hybrid Camrys are built in the USA each year. US production uses fully imported powertrains (engine, hybrid infrastructure and battery, etc) from Japan. Altona's hybrids will follow suit. No local powertrain engineering will be incorporated in the model.
Toyota says it will sell the new Camry Hybrid alongside its dedicated hybrid Prius model in its local line-up. The latter is due for replacement before the locally produced Camry hits the market.
Speculation is the new Prius will be positioned as Toyota's premium hybrid offering, with the Camry aimed at mainstream consumers.
The arrival of the Camry Hybrid will correspond with the model's midlife facelift.
Unlikely to change is the powertrain, which combines a conventional 2.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive system for a total output of around 140kW.
In US trim the current version returns a combined economy figure of around 7.0L/100km according to US government figures. Toyota Australia has not projected a fuel economy figure for the local model. The conventional 2.4-litre fuel-injected petrol sold Down Under has a local combined figure of 9.9L/100km.
Toyota Australia sales and marketing boss, David Buttner, said the company would likely launch two model grades when the local hybrid debuts. No pricing details have been discussed publicly; however, Buttner says the premium demanded for the hybrid needs to be competitive with the diesel alternatives offered by some competitors.
Buttner says Toyota's decision to build Camry hybrid was not conditional on funding from the Australian Government Green Car Innovation Fund. Nor had the federal government committed to buy hybrid Camrys as a 'sweetner', he said.
Victorian premier Brumby did commit his government to purchasing hybrid Camry's from the plant, however. The initial commitment is 2000 cars over two years, he says.
Japanese business publication Nikkei broke the news of the hybrid plan last Saturday (June 7). It says production in Thailand will begin later this year, beating Toyota's Altona facility to the punch by more than a year.
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