A little wonder, every day
Toyota brought the Prius launch forward by a year
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Mytho88, “1997 Toyota Prius 01.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 3.0; first-generation Prius photographed in a museum; no edits. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1997_Toyota_Prius_01.jpg
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The Prius story began with Toyota’s G21 project in the early 1990s. Toyota showed a hybrid Prius concept in 1995 and later decided to develop a production model. Production had initially been targeted for the end of 1998, but management brought the target forward by a year: the first Prius was unveiled in October 1997, and sales in Japan began on 10 December. By 31 January 2017, Toyota’s cumulative worldwide hybrid sales had passed 10 million vehicles; that figure covers Toyota’s hybrid lineup, not the Prius alone.

