Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun reports that Toyota Motor plans to offer gasoline-electric hybrid versions for all vehicle classes to meet its target of quadrupling annual worldwide hybrid sales to 1 million vehicles by 2012, representing 10% of total annual new vehicle sales.

Toyota also is working to reduce the production costs for hybrid systems to enable their application in lower-priced models. The company would like to lower the cost by more than 30% through improvements to the battery and by reducing the size of parts. The size of the system itself is also to be halved by switching from nickel metal hydride to lithium-ion batteries. [Also see comments at end of article - Ed]