Toyota Denies Japanese Government Helped with the Prius
April 02, 2008

Toyota Motor Corp. denied Wednesday it had received any funding from the Japanese government to develop its Prius hybrid, The Associated Press reported.

Former Toyota executive and board member Jim Press, now vice chairman and president of Chrysler, had been quoted in the March 24 issue of Business Week magazine as saying, “The Japanese government paid for 100 percent of the development of the battery and hybrid system that went into the Toyota Prius."

Toyota said the report was not true. “I can say 100 percent that Toyota received absolutely no support — no money, no grants — from the Japanese government for the development of the Prius,” Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco told the newswire.

Japanese companies have a reputation for having close relations with the government, and some private-sector projects receive public money, especially those for clean energy. But there have been no previous high-profile reports alleging Toyota's hybrid project received public money, the newswire noted.

While at Toyota, Press, a 37-year veteran of the company before joining Chrysler in September, was a huge advocate for hybrid cars. Chrysler has no hybrids to sell yet. In an interview with Bloomberg News only a couple of months before he went to Chrysler, Press, the first American to serve on Toyota’s board, compared the Prius with the Ford Model T.

"(The Prius) is going to be like the Model T when you look back. It was the forerunner," he'd said, predicting everything would eventually be a hybrid and Toyota would continue to play a dominate role in the hybrid market.•

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