Toyota Will Launch 2 Hybrid Cars In China This Year

Toyota Motor Corp.’s Managing Officer Tokuo Fukuichi, Nov. 28, 2012 — Toyota Motor Corp.’s Managing Officer Tokuo Fukuichi looks at vehicles as an Auris is reflected in a glass window at the company’s design-center building in Toyota, Japan, in this file photograph taken Nov. 28, 2012. Reuters/Yuriko Nakao/Files

(Reuters) -- The Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker by sales volume, plans to launch two hybrid cars in China this year in conjunction with efforts to provide vehicles that will help to cut pollution in the country. Called Corolla and Levin Hev, the gasoline-electric hybrid cars, will be rolled out in China in the second half of the year, the Japanese company said Sunday on the eve of the Auto Shanghai 2015 exhibition, whose associated events get under way Monday.

Toyota’s joint venture with the FAW Group will make the Corolla, while its joint venture with the Guangzhou Automobile Group will manufacture the Levin Hev.

China has been the world’s largest car market since 2009, with sales last year rising 6.9 percent, to 23.5 million vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in January.

(Reporting by Sue-Lin Wong; Writing by Lee Chyen Yee; Editing by David Goodman)