Toyota sees new opportunities in leveraging hybrid tech

The THS hybrid system in the Prius and other Toyota cars is fantastic. It is well in advance of the hybrid systems used by other makers, like Honda and Subaru. The hybrid XV made by Subaru gets barely any fuel economy boost over the regular model in real world conditions. It is a complete waste of time.

I don't know if licensing like this is the right move for Toyota, but it is a great system and will reduce the pollution created by other manufacturers' cars. The main thing that has stopped hybrids being popular in Europe has been diesels, ultimately a step backwards because they are a huge cause of localized PM and NOx pollution in built-up areas (we own a diesel CX-5 ourselves, but live in the sparsely populated Japanese countryside). More hybrids would therefore be a blessing in Europe. Hybrids themselves may ultimately only have a limited lifespan once battery technology improves and/or people grow to care less about the range of all-electric cars, but for the time being, they are great cars in 2019.

Toyota is doing this traying to slow down the change to fully electrical vehicles as they are so far behind other OEMs in developing fully electrical cars. They spend too much time developing the Fuel Cell car which unfortunately no one like to buy as it is too expensive and lack of Hydrogen filling stations.

The future is fully electric not hybrid so I wonder to what extent this has any bearing on that

It is said EV cars will be produced a lot cheaper than fuel combustion type cars in the future. Because EV cars do not take many parts. It needs only a simple electric motor as an engine. An EV car will become purchasable at around one million yen, Nagamori the president of Nihon Densan predicted. Toyota and other car makers are worried about the future of the fuel combustion cars. Hybrid cars are halfway from combustion type of cars to electric cars. It is not the speed people want for cars today but safety. Nihon Densan came up with a gadget, a driver can have his car entered into his garage backward safely with just pushing a button.