Toyota pitches plug-in hybrids in Hakone ekiden, biofuel in Dakar

Toyota Motor Corp has provided 21 plug-in hybrid cars for organizers of the Tokyo-Hakone collegiate ekiden road relay through Monday, while also entering cars powered solely by biodiesel fuel in this year’s Dakar Rally, company officials said.

The leading Japanese carmaker is using the nationally televised two-day relay to showcase its plug-in hybrids, which can be recharged from home power points and also run on gasoline.

Including the 21 hybrids, Toyota has contributed all the 34 cars used by the organizers, plus 27 drivers, replacing Honda and other rivals in the role.

Amid an electric vehicle boom—with Mitsubishi Motors Corp and Nissan Motor Co launching models last year—Toyota, which also announced it would launch a compact electric vehicle in 2012, has favored plug-in hybrids, due to challenges with recharging electric cars.

As for the 2011 Dakar Rally, a roughly 9,000-kilometer off-road endurance race which started Saturday in Buenos Aires, Toyota is looking for a sixth-straight victory in the stock-car class with its two biodiesel-powered Land Cruisers using fuel refined from waste cooking oil collected from local communities.

Toyota had since 2007 used gas oil of which 10-20% was biodiesel, but succeeded in increasing it to 100 percent for the latest race, despite smaller budgets and manpower, after earlier mulling the prospect of withdrawing from the event entirely due to deteriorating earnings last year.