Toyota tops Interbrand Best Global Green Brands second year running

The company's success in the report is that Toyota has continued to maintain environmental sustainability as part of the company's core management priority. Interbrand also cites the expansion of the world's first mass-produced full hybrid model, the Toyota Prius, into a full family range 15 years after the model's launch as a further success story for the company.

Hybrid range is expanded

Sales of the company's full hybrid vehicles have surpassed four million units globally since the end of April 2012, including around 430 000 units sold in Europe. Toyota Europe plans to increase the sales share of full hybrid Toyota and Lexus vehicles in 2012 to 14% which currently stands at around 10%.

In South Africa, the 'quiet' revolution gathers momentum with the imminent launch this month of the European-built Toyota Yaris Hybrid. This brings the local Toyota Hybrid family to three: the recently re-positioned Prius is at the top of the environmental chain, followed by the Auris HSD and now the Yaris HSD, which is the first time that Toyota will offer its greenest technology in a B-segment vehicle. On the luxury front, Lexus has a full spectrum hybrid range (CT, RX, GS and LS).