As the competition in the green-car segment of the international auto market expands vehicle manufacturers are coming under increasing pressure to keep up. Toyota has long been ahead of the curve with its standard setting hybrid Prius model that has been on sale since 1997. In an announcement made early on Tuesday Toyota has said it will launch 6 all new hybrid models by the end of 2012, 2 of the cars will be Lexus models and the other 4 will all be sold under the Toyota name.

It appears that Toyota is keen on hitting the press release journalists hard today, the company nonchalantly announced that a joint Toyota-Tesla RAV4 would be released at this years LA Auto Show via Twitter a little earlier on the same day. With the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt and Honda CR-Z all going on sale within 6 months of each other it is possible that Toyota is feeling some threat to its current No 1 status as the worlds top hybrid maker and felt a little PR blitz was in order.

One of the cars we could potentially see is the Toyota FT-HS concept, initially released at the 2007 North American International Auto Show the concept drew huge amounts of media and fan attention, now with the release of the sporty Honda CR-Z Hybrid it’s quite possible that Toyota would counter with a road going version of the FT-HS, possibly under the Supra name.