Toyota and Volkswagen continue to dominate production and sales of gas/electric hybrids and clean-diesel vehicles, respectively, as both sources of power showed strong gains in 2012.
Sales of hybrids in the U.S. in 2012 totaled 434,498 vehicles, an increase of 61 percent over the previous year’s number. It accounted for 3 percent of total new auto sales in the country.
Models from Toyota and Lexus, its luxury nameplate, accounted for 72 percent of all hybrids sold last year.
The runaway best-seller among hybrids was the Toyota Prius Liftback with 147,503; with its two other models, the V and C, the Prius sold slightly more than half of all hybrids. Second best-seller of all hybrids was another Toyota, the Camry.
Sales of clean-diesel-fueled vehicles in ’12 increased 13 percent to 125,522.
Top seller was the Volkswagen Jetta TDI with 48,099, while the VW Passat TDI had 26,469 sales and the BMW X5 diesel 10,276. Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche TDI models made up 79 percent of all clean-diesel sales.
The Chevy Volt took charge of the plug-in electric sales race with 23,461 delivered in 2012. Others included Toyota Prius Plug-in with 12,750, Nissan Leaf 9,819, Tesla Model S 2,400, Ford C-Max Energi 2,374, Ford Focus 685, BMW ActivE 671, Mitsubishi i 588, Toyota RAV4 EV 192, smart fortwo EV 139 and Honda Fit EV 93.
Bud Wells can be reached via e-mail at bwells@denverpost.com.
