Toyota Motor Corporation the producer of Lexus brake dust shields has recently announced that it has developed a plug-in hybrid vehicle that will be used for public road tests to be held in Japan, US, and Europe.

Aside from ToMoCo, General Motors and Ford of US are also working on their own plug-in hybrids, which have become an important technology for the reduction of harmful gases that caused global warming.

Plug-in hybrids including that of Toyota generally make use of batteries that power an electric motor. It also has an internal combustion engine that takes over in powering the vehicle once the battery is low. The batteries are charged by simply plugging them into a standard wall outlet.

The plug-ins however run longer on electricity and ideal for shorter distances than the more common hybrids on the road such as the Prius. The Prius is another type of hybrid vehicle that switches between an electric motor and gas engine that results to lesser consumption of fuel.

Toyota is also the first automaker to be given approval by the Japanese government to conduct road tests on public roads. Toyota said that it will gather information about the tests from eight plug-in vehicles that are to be used by the government to determine emissions and fuel efficiency.

Masatami Takimoto a Toyota executive who is in charge of the technology said that the approval came last Wednesday morning. Takimoto however decline to comment on to when Toyota will introduce a plug-in hybrid to the market. But he did say that further development in battery technology is still needed.

The vehicle to be used for the test is called the Toyota Plug-in HV which was displayed last Wednesday and runs on the same nickel metal hydride battery found on the Prius with a traveling range of 13 kilometers or 8 miles on electricity alone. According to Takimoto the test will help determine the range that consumers want.

Large scale production of plug-ins is still not pursued due to issues on costs and battery technology which limits the vehicles’ range. But manufacturers are competing to bring the technology to the market as consumers seek for other alternative aside from traditional engines and high gasoline prices.

Almost all automakers are working to create their own hybrids but Toyota has still the advantage since it has over 10 years of experience in selling the technology. Toyota mostly based the improvements on its hybrids from feedbacks of drivers rather than from lab results.

Toyota has several hybrid offerings available which include the Prius, the hybrid Camry, and the hybrid Lexus. The Japanese automaker has also set a target of selling a million hybrids after 2010 which is not impossible especially since last June the automaker has been able to obtain a cumulative sale of hybrids more than 1 million---a milestone for the automaker.