Always Better Cars - Toyota Toyota Europe

We design and make Always Better Cars that excite and exhilarate our customers. Cars that help people to have cleaner, safer, less stressful and more connected lives. Leading the way on safety, quality, durability and environmental performance, our goal is to bring a smile to every customer’s face by putting people at the centre of Always Better Cars.

Our vision

Toyota aims to deliver Always Better Cars that open up new opportunities for customers, change lives for the better and bring new discoveries. As we strive to do so, our ideals and pride in manufacturing are evident at every stage, from development, through production and sales, and ensuring quality, durability and environmental performance of every car we make. We believe that cars are more than a means of transportation. We want to create products that are fun, allow our customers to stay always connected and conduct stress free lives.

The challenge

The car industry today is facing bigger challenges than ever before. Rising pollution in cities has led to tougher national and international regulations, requiring cars to be greener throughout their life cycle. At the same time, society and regulators expect cars to be safer, better connected and able to communicate with the surrounding environment. And while the economy in Europe continues to struggle, the need for affordable mobility has never been greater.

As social demands and expectations have changed, customers' perception has also shifted. A more personalised form of mobility is demanded by individuals who no longer see cars simply as a means of transportation, but also as an entertainment centre and a workplace. To meet this demand new players have entered the market, pushing for innovation in areas that were only imagined few years ago, such as total integration of the car with personal devices and self-driving technology.

Our approach

At Toyota, we believe that driving should be a pleasure. For this reason we want to deliver cars that cater for the peace of mind of our customers thanks to their environmental performance, quality and safety, while at the providing an exciting driving experience. In Europe, our focus is on exterior styling and interior and colour design development for small and compact cars, so to give the highest sensory quality. A particular role in this is played by the Toyota European Design Development (ED²) in Sophia Antipolis, France. Its mission is to create new forms of design for the European market by anticipating and analysing global trends in automotive to ensure Toyota cars remain at the forefront of the industry.

Developing alternative powertrains

Helping to reduce the environmental impacts of our products is a top priority for Toyota. Green technology has been the focus of our innovation efforts for decades and since we launched the Prius, the first mass-produced hybrid car, back in 1997 we have contributed to a reduction of around 67 million tonnes of CO2 emissions that would have been produced by gasoline-powered vehicles of similar size and driving performance. Along with hybrid vehicles, we have been developing next-generation eco-cars such as plug-in hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles powered by hydrogen. In 2015 we launched the Mirai, our first fuel cell sedan. Through the effort of our engineers we have managed to downsize the component to fit within a sedan body without compromising quality. This amazing vehicle has the autonomy of a petrol car, and yet, its only emission is water. Indeed, we consider it to be the nearest thing yet to the ultimate eco-car.

Working towards zero accidents

Safety has always been a primary concern for Toyota. Our ultimate vision is to eliminate traffic casualties, and to achieve this we are developing passive, active and pre-collision safety technology, to prevent and limit damages caused by accidents. In particular, we are focusing on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), such as the Pre-Crash Safety system and the Collision-Avoidance Assist, aimed at preventing, or reducing the impact of, accidents, and Human-Machine Interface controls that allow drivers to keep under control everything happening in and outside the vehicle without having to divert their sight from the road. Moreover, we actively collaborate with the EU and public and private partners in the ASPECSS project, whose objective is to develop standard testing and assessment methods for active safety and integrated pedestrian safety systems.

Making cars our customers love

We want our customers to fall in love with driving. To this end we develop cars people want to own and drive, such as the Auris, Aygo and the newly introduced Toyota C-HR. These cars, characterised by bold, striking design, aim to bring back fun and passion to the driving experience. The Aygo, for example, is characterised by a style called ‘J-Playful’; a link to contemporary Japanese youth-culture, which favours strong and outspoken shapes and forms. It wants to offer customers class-leading fuel efficiency, but also more comfort, and, above all, more fun to drive. The Toyota C-HR, on the other hand, is designed to stand out thanks to a highly-innovative concept study for lightweight and dynamic C-segment hybrid crossover. Behind the wheel it has been conceived around a new platform designed to satisfy customers’ demands for state-of-the-art-handling and controllability. A new advanced full hybrid powertrain offers a uniquely engaging driving experience matched to 21st century traffic conditions, whilst delivering outstanding efficiency.

Bold Goals & Continuous Innovation

We develop our cars, and our hybrid technology, advanced alternative powertrains and safety systems, to address, reduce and ultimately eliminate the key challenges of modern cities: congestion, pollution and accidents.

Sustainability Achievements in 2015

No. 1 – ranked for After Sales Services in 2015

of gasoline saved thanks to hybrid vehicles since 1997

of CO₂ emissions since 1997 due to worldwide sales of Hybrids

The Yaris is a living proof of Toyota’s dedication to the creation of Always Better Cars. Designed in Europe for local and global markets, it shows our commitment to European innovation and manufacturing. The Yaris hybrid is even more environmentally friendly than before.

The Yaris is designed to exceed the expectations of the sophisticated European audience, and win customers’ hearts as well as their brains. Characterised by new distinctive styling, wider diversification of equipment and colour choices, improved road-holding, driving pleasure, comfort and soundproofing, it sets a new standard in the very competitive B-segment.

Yaris hybrid

The hybrid version, which accounts for more than 30% of total Yaris sales, has been even further improved. It offers customers a uniquely smooth, quiet and entirely intuitive driving experience, together with strong, seamless acceleration from a standstill. It is also more environmentally friendly than ever, with consumption of just 3.3 l/100km (NEDC Cycle) and emissions as little as 75 gC02/km as well as extremely low NOX and particulate emissions. This green performance makes Yaris hybrid exempt from pollution taxes such as London’s congestion charge - just one example of the benefits to customers and their communities of greener cars.

Yaris – the European car

This project has been Toyota’s largest scale European vehicle development to date, and the first concrete example of the role envisaged in the Toyota Global Vision for Europe as the planning centre for small to midsize cars. In fact, for the first time Europe has been in the driving seat of a global vehicle’s development.
Toyota Motor Europe (TME) and Toyota European Design Development (ED2) executed all phases of the planning, design and development, and the project management. In practical terms, this has resulted in TME contributing about 75% of the creation of the 2014 Yaris.
This figure clearly highlights the big step forward in European ownership of vehicle development when compared to the 25% for the 2011 Yaris.
A total of 85 million euros and 576,000 hours of R&D have been invested in this project, for which also over 1,000 new parts have been designed.
To crown this impressive feat, the new Yaris also received the ‘Origine France Garantie’ label, making it a true 'Made in France'

We at Toyota are continuously looking for ways to reduce our impact on the environment.

We develop innovative ways to manage all vehicles - and especially hybrids at the end of their life, with almost all of their materials being reduced, reused, recycled and recovered. These simple words help define our constant improvement in the way we design and make vehicles, how our vehicles perform when driven by our customers, and how they can be safely and responsibly disposed of when they reach the end of their useful life.

Our focus is on the four R's (reduce, reuse, recycle and recover) that help us minimise the use of valuable natural resources and carbon emissions. It also helps us think about how we can make future vehicles that are even cleaner and more efficient, by using innovative materials and alternative power systems. This approach will lead us to our goal of the ultimate eco-car, one which has zero impact on the environment at every stage of its lifecycle.

To learn more about the four R’s please check our environmental page.

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