Can you guess how many liters of gasoline Toyota's hybrids have saved?

Toyota’s global hybrid sales top 6 million. The amount of gasoline saved is pretty amazing. What would you guess?

These Toyota green-car announcements will be coming more often than ever. At its present pace Toyota is adding about 1 million hybrids every nine months. By the end of 2013 Toyota’s global hybrid sales had surpassed 6 million cars by 72,000. No other automaker comes close to the impact that Toyota’s green cars have had.

Currently, Toyota sells two fully electric vehicles, one plug-in hybrid, and 24 hybrid models worldwide. That number will increase by about 50% over the next two years as Toyota is poised to launch 15 more models. The hybrids in Toyota’s lineup start with small economy cars like the Prius C and are available in almost every car and SUV category. Lexus hybrids sell particularly well and most of its models are available as hybrids and one model is exclusively a hybrid. In the coming year Lexus will introduce its first sports car hybrid, the RC 300h.

Toyota is well known for its Prius, but that car’s legacy is now so entrenched it is often overlooked by green car awarders. In fact, this past year Toyota took home a number of American green-car of the year awards for other hybrid models that it makes. However, Toyota’s hybrids are not just a US sensation. By our count, the 647,000 hybrids Toyota has sold in Europe is far more than all the European manufacturers combined have sold hybrids (or any green car for that matter) in the US market. Of course, Japan is truly Toyota’s home market and there it dominates with 2.8 million hybrids sold.

Electric vehicles have no tailpipe emissions and for that they are duly credited with being the greenest cars available. However, in the US last year there were only about 60,000 passenger sold in North America that operate using only electricity. The reduction in fuel used that they represent is tiny compared to the savings from the 358,000 hybrids Toyota sold in our market.

Over the 17 model years it has produced hybrids, Toyota estimates that the hybrids it has sold has reduced the CO2 emitted by cars by about 41 million tons. It further estimates that it has saved 15 billion liters of gasoline (15 million kiloliters). This compared to customers having chosen other non-hybrid models of similar size.