More info, as well as a video has emerged on Toyota’s new prototype racer, expected to race at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Yes, it’s a hybrid, and yes, it should be very fast.

Toyota’s LMP1 racer — dubbed the TS030 Hybrid – sports an all-new carbon fiber chassis, along with — as has long been reported — a hybrid powertrain, which happens to be one of Toyota’s specialties. But unlike the Hybrid Synergy Drive found in Prii and Lexus models roaming our roads, the TS030 will feature a Toyota Hybrid System –Racing (THS-R) powertrain, which includes a 3.4-liter, naturally-aspirated V-8. Completing the hybrid equation are two electric motors (one in the front and the in back) and a capacitor storage system, which stores energy while braking and releases a power boost when needed. FIA regulations will only allow energy deployment to two wheels at a time.

TheTS030 Hybrid was developed by Toyota Motorsport GmbH, which is based in Germany, and the car is viewed as a successor to the TS010 and TS020 cars that earned podium finishes at Le Mans throughout the 1990s. The first team of drivers has already been confirmed, and will include Alex Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre, and Kazuki Nakajima.

“It was cool to drive the TS030 HYBRID car for the first time,” Wurz said in a statement. “Just leaving the garage on the electric power is very futuristic, then when you let the clutch go and the internal combustion engine kicks in it is like an old friend has returned. I am definitely very happy but my nature is to also be analytical and therefore I know there is still a lot of work to be done.”

The video below features the TS030 Hybrid performing test laps at the Paul Ricard racetrack. It makes it official debut at the Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps on May 5, followed by the Le Mans 24 Hours race on June 16. Toyota plans to enter two cars for Le Mans. With Peugeot now out of prototype endurance racing, the one to beat is Audi’s R18 TDI LMP1. Diesel power vs. hybrid? Who will win the battle of the eco-racers?

Lexus wowed the crowds at this year’s Detroit auto show with the LF-LC concept. A sports car that’s strikingly beautiful, sumptuously luxurious, and clearly a Lexus, the LF-LC knocked us off our feet, and in the video below the car’s designers talk about what their favorite features are. Every detail of the car’s design was thoroughly thought out and meticulously designed. Says Kevin Hunter, president of Toyota’s Calty design center, “We tried to really delight the customer with something new, something different, something exotic, expressive, sexy.” From the high-tech camera-lens technology in the headlamps to the raindrop LED front and rear running lights to the jet-fighter afterburner-inspired taillamps to the glass-to-glass roof pillar to the spiraling center consol shape, the LF-LC is full of details that mesmorize. Sadly, there is little to no possibility of Lexus producing the LF-LC, but look for the car’s design elements to proliferate across the brand’s lineup in the near future. We can all hold our breath that the flagship Lexus coupe will look just as fetching, but in the meantime, check out the video of the LF-LC and its proud parents.

The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father’s company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA. Toyota Motor Corporation group companies are Toyota (including the Scion brand), Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino Motors, along with several “non-automotive” companies. TMC is part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

In 1924 Sakichi Toyoda invented the Toyoda Model G Automatic Loom. The principle of Jidoka, which means that the machine stops itself when a problem occurs, became later a part of the Toyota Production System. Looms were built on a small production line. In 1929, the patent for the automatic loom was sold to a British company, generating the starting capital for the automobile development.

Vehicles were originally sold under the name “Toyoda” (トヨダ), from the family name of the company’s founder, Kiichirō Toyoda. In April 1936, Toyoda’s first passenger car, the Model AA was completed. The sales price was 3,350 yen, 400 yen cheaper than Ford or GM cars.

House of Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, near Toyota City
In September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new logo. Out of 27,000 entries the winning entry was the three Japanese katakana letters for “Toyoda” in a circle. But Risaburō Toyoda, who had married into the family and was not born with that name, preferred “Toyota” (トヨタ) because it took eight brush strokes (a fortuitous number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end) and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one (voiced consonants are considered to have a “murky” or “muddy” sound compared to voiceless consonants, which are “clear”).

Inside the house of Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, near Toyota City
Since “Toyoda” literally means “fertile rice paddies”, changing the name also prevented the company being associated with old-fashioned farming. The newly formed word was trademarked and the company was registered in August 1937 as the “Toyota Motor Company”.

1st generation Toyopet Crown Model RSD (1955/1 – 1958/10)
From September 1947, Toyota’s small-sized vehicles were sold under the name “Toyopet” (トヨペット). The first vehicle sold under this name was the Toyopet SA but it also included vehicles such as the Toyopet SB light truck, Toyopet Stout light truck, Toyopet Crown and the Toyopet Corona. However, when Toyota eventually entered the American market in 1957 with the Crown, the name was not well received due to connotations of toys and pets. The name was soon dropped for the American market but continued in other markets until the mid 1960s.

With over 30 million sold, the Corolla is one of the most popular and best selling cars in the world.
The Toyota Motor Company received its first Japanese Quality Control Award at the start of the 1980s and began participating in a wide variety of motorsports. Due to the 1973 oil crisis, consumers in the lucrative US market began turning to small cars with better fuel economy. American car manufacturers had considered small economy cars to be an “entry level” product, and their small vehicles employed a low level of quality in order to keep the price low.

By the early sixties, the US had begun placing stiff import tariffs on certain vehicles. The Chicken tax of 1964 placed a 25% tax on imported light trucks. In response to the tariff, Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. began building plants in the US by the early eighties.

In 1982, the Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged into one company, the Toyota Motor Corporation. Two years later, Toyota entered into a joint venture with General Motors called NUMMI, the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc, operating an automobile-manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The factory was an old General Motors plant that had been closed for two years. Toyota then started to establish new brands at the end of the 1980s, with the launch of their luxury division Lexus in 1989.

In the 1990s, Toyota began to branch out from producing mostly compact cars by adding many larger and more luxurious vehicles to its lineup, including a full-sized pickup, the T100 (and later the Tundra); several lines of SUVs; a sport version of the Camry, known as the Camry Solara; and the Scion brand, a group of several affordable, yet sporty, automobiles targeted specifically to young adults. Toyota also began production of the world’s best-selling hybrid car, the Prius, in 1997.

With a major presence in Europe, due to the success of Toyota Team Europe, the corporation decided to set up TMME, Toyota Motor Europe Marketing & Engineering, to help market vehicles in the continent. Two years later, Toyota set up a base in the United Kingdom, TMUK, as the company’s cars had become very popular among British drivers. Bases in Indiana, Virginia and Tianjin were also set up. In 1999, the company decided to list itself on the New York and London Stock Exchanges.

In 2001, Toyota’s Toyo Trust and Banking merged with two other banks to form UFJ Bank, which was accused of corruption by the Japan’s government for making bad loans to alleged Yakuza crime syndicates with executives accused of blocking Financial Service Agency inspections. The UFJ was listed among Fortune Magazine’s largest money-losing corporations in the world, with Toyota’s chairman serving as a director. At the time, the UFJ was one of the largest shareholders of Toyota. As a result of Japan’s banking crisis, UFJ merged with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi to become the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

In 2002, Toyota managed to enter a Formula One works team and establish joint ventures with French motoring companies Citroën and Peugeot a year after Toyota started producing cars in France.

Toyota ranked eighth on Forbes 2000 list of the world’s leading companies for the year 2005 but slid to 55 for 2011. The company was number one in global automobile sales for the first quarter of 2008.

On December 7, 2004, a US press release was issued stating that Toyota would be offering Sirius Satellite Radios. However, as late as January 27, 2007, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite radio kits were not available for Toyota factory radios.[citation needed] While the press release enumerated nine models, only limited availability existed at the dealer level in the US. As of 2008, all Toyota and Scion models have either standard or available XM radio kits. Major Lexus dealerships have been offering satellite radio kits for Lexus vehicles since 2005, in addition to factory-equipped satellite radio models.

In 2007, Toyota released an update of its full size truck, the Tundra, produced in two American factories, one in Texas and one in Indiana. “Motor Trend” named the Tundra “Truck of the Year,” and the 2007 Toyota Camry “Car of the Year” for 2007. It also began the construction of two new factories, one to build the RAV4 in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada and the other to build the Toyota Prius in Blue Springs, Mississippi, USA. This plant was originally intended to build the Toyota Highlander, but Toyota decided to use the plant in Princeton, Indiana, USA, instead. The company has also found recent success with its smaller models—the Corolla and Yaris—as gasoline prices have risen rapidly in the last few years.