TOKYO — Toyota has adopted ambitious environmental targets that call for selling only hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, and hardly any that run on gasoline, by 2050.

The automaker promised to involve governments, affiliated companies and other “stakeholders” in its push to reduce average emissions from Toyota cars by 90 percent within 35 years, compared with 2010 levels.

Electric cars aren’t part of the vision outlined by top Toyota Motor Corp. officials Wednesday at a Tokyo museum, striking a contrast with rivals such as Nissan Motor Co., which has banked on that zero-emissions technology.

Toyota’s commitments come at a time when the auto industry has been shaken by a scandal at Germany’s Volkswagen AG, in which VW admitted it cheated on diesel emissions tests covering millions of cars.

Toyota projected its annual sales of fuel cell vehicles will reach more than 30,000 by about 2020, which is 10 times its projected figure for 2017.

Fuel cell vehicles run on hydrogen and produce no emissions. Toyota’s Mirai fuel cell vehicle went on sale late last year, and 1,500 orders have been received in Japan. The Mirai recently became available in the U.S. and Europe.

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Annual sales of hybrid vehicles, which alternate between a gasoline engine and an electric motor, will reach 1.5 million soon, Toyota said. By 2020, Toyota will have sold 15 million hybrids, nearly twice what it has sold so far around the world, the company said.

The Toyota Prius, introduced in 1997, is the top-selling hybrid, with about 4 million sold globally so far. Toyota is promising to develop a hybrid version in every category, including sport-utility vehicles that usually guzzle gas, as well as luxury models.

“You may think 35 years is a long time,” Senior Managing Officer Kiyotaka Ise told reporters. “But for an automaker to envision all combustion engines as gone is pretty extraordinary.”

Ise acknowledged that some gasoline engine cars would remain in less developed markets, but only in small numbers.

He and other Toyota officials insisted on the inevitability of their overall vision, stressing that the problems of global warming and environmental destruction make a move toward a hydrogen-based society a necessity.

Experts agree that more has to be done to curtail global warming and pollution, and nations are increasingly tightening emissions standards. But they are divided on whether all gasoline engines will disappear, or will survive because of greener internal-combustion engines and the arrival of clean diesel technology.

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Tatsuo Yoshida, senior analyst at Barclays Securities Japan in Tokyo, said Toyota’s goals aren’t far-fetched.

“The internal-combustion engine is developing and metamorphosing into hybrids,” he said. “Toyota has been working on this technology for a long time. When officials speak out like this, it means they are 120 percent confident this is their scenario.”

As part of its environmental vision, Toyota also promised to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from production lines during manufacturing in 2030 to about a third of 2001 levels.

Toyota said it will develop manufacturing technology that uses hydrogen, and will use wind power at its Tahara plant, both by 2020. It also promised to beef up various recycling measures, including developing ways to build vehicles from recycled ones.

When asked why Toyota remained so cautious on electric vehicles, officials said they take too long to recharge, despite battery innovations, which limits the vehicles to short-range travel in cities.

Toyota Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, known as the “father of the Prius,” said the company is taking the environment seriously because it has always tried to contribute to a better society.

“We have the same principles since our founding,” he said, showing on stage a photo of Sakichi Toyoda, the Toyota founder’s father, who invented a textile loom in 1891. “That is Toyota’s DNA.”


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