1999 Camry on 2040-cars

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Toyota nudges US sales projections up to 2.25M

Toyota has raised its expectations for 2013's US sales for the third time since the end of 2012. The new target rests at 2.25 million units, when sales of Toyota, Lexus and Scion are taken as one. Subtracting Lexus, Toyota is still expecting to move over two million vehicles in the US by the end of 2013.
According to a report from Automotive News, the sales expectations came from Bob Carter, senior VP of automotive operations for Toyota USA, during a dealers during a meeting in Atlanta. The heightened expectations go along with Toyota's predictions for the US market as a whole, which it expects to grow to 15.5 million units by the end of 2013.
Besides an overall, national uptick in new vehicle sales, Toyota is also expecting a big push as it puts the next-generation Corolla to market during the second half of this year, along with the Tundra pickup truck. Meanwhile, dealers were shown images of a refreshed Camry, set to arrive in 2015, and reported that it's "more than a nip and a tuck," according to the AN report.

2015 Toyota Sienna

It's hard to love a minivan, but it's very, very easy to use one. More than any other kind of vehicle - save a panel van, perhaps - the minivan is the most appliance-like of four-wheeled transportation devices. And most minivan buyers don't need to love their purchases; they just need to use them. So when it comes to a minivan's driving dynamics, who cares?
Well, we do. So we perked right up when Toyota talked about refinements it made to the 2015 Sienna, starting with some 142 added spot welds made to the body structure. Normally not stop-the-presses stuff, but Toyota says the added reinforcements prompted Sienna engineers to recalibrate the springs and shocks for improved handling, and our very limited wheel time along the (admittedly benign) roads on the Big Island of Hawaii revealed the 2015 Sienna SE model's handling to be tidier and more engaging than you'd expect for a porky, 4,560-pound, eight-passenger box on wheels.
Driving Notes

Toyota to start production of hydrogen vehicles in December

Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell vehicle will be in showrooms sooner than planned, the Japan Times reporting that production will commence in mid-December with the sedan following "by the end of this year." No reason was given for the new timeline; Toyota has been saying all along that we'd see it in 2015.
The company is said to be "considering" production volume of "dozens of... vehicles per month" at a "likely" price of eight million yen, which is $78,030 US. That is well in line with the numbers thrown around last year, when the target was somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000. Then late last year, during our first drive of the FCHV mule, we wrote that "the official quote... [is] that a price of 'less than 10 million yen is ideal.'"
That alleged $78K is a sizable sum to be one of the early adopters on the hydrogen fuel cell wagon train, but with things moving around so much - and with Toyota publicly citing hydrogen fuel cells as the future - there's plenty of reason to be cautious about that number.