Toyota has sold nine million hybrids across the world since the Prius first became available in Japan almost 20 years ago. That’s a lot of batteries. The amount of fuel saved by those hybrids — with a bit of back-of-the-envelope math — is enough for each Toyota hybrid to drive around the entire planet, and then keep going.
The 9,000,000th hybrid — probably a Prius — was actually sold in April. While the Prius is the most popular of Toyota’s hybrids worldwide (with over 3.7 million sold), the relatively recent entrant Camry Hybrid is Australia’s favourite petrol-electric with nearly 38,000 sold since its debut in 2010. The three variants of Prius have sold 30,500 total, while Australia also has almost 17,500 Lexus hybrids. Toyota only hit the 50,000 hybrid mark in Australia in March of 2014.
The fuel saved by each of these cars in their life spans so far over an equivalent petrol model is around 25,000,000,000 litres — enough for each of the cars to travel 1.3 times around the equator or 52,400km. That’s also 67 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. Toyota is expanding its hybrid line-up in Australia, too, with the hybrid Corolla expected to land on local shores later this year. [Toyota]