Hybrids reach 5 million mark in sales for Toyota

On Wednesday, Toyota Motors announced it reached the five million sales mark for its autos that are hybrid. The giant automaker from Japan produces the Prius Hybrid and announced that more than 5.125 million of its hybrid vehicles have been sold since the first Prius was launched back in 1997.

The hybrid gives users the ability to switch between an electric engine and a standard gasoline engine in accordance with driving conditions and the availability of resources such as electrical recharging facilities.

Many people in the industry scoffed at the idea initially, saying it was too outlandish, too complicated and to efficient for the general public to respond to it. Nevertheless, 16 years have passed and the sale of hybrids for Toyota represents 40% of its total sales in Japan and 14% of its sales globally.

Toyota started with just its Prius back in 1997 but now 19 standard Toyota models are offered as hybrids along with just on plug-in auto sold commercially. The automaker has also confirmed it would have another 18 models that would be offered in hybrid prior to the end of 2015.

Even executives at the Japanese automaker were not completely convinced the hybrid would be successful and only 1,000 units were made in the original launch of the hybrid with just 1,000 scheduled to be made each month.

However, once the initial launch took place it was easy to see that many more would be necessary as orders for the Prius took off including with heavyweights in both Hollywood and the government.