Toyota unveils higher-mileage Prius hybrid

DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp on Monday unveiled its third-generation Prius hybrid, the world's top-selling "green" car, targeting U.S. sales of 180,000 units in the first 12 months and 400,000 globally in 2010.

Introducing the mid-sized sedan at the Detroit auto show, Toyota said the new Prius achieved a combined city/highway mileage of 50 miles per gallon, an improvement over the 46 mpg for the current model and 41 mpg for the first version.

The car will hit showrooms in Japan and the United States in late spring, followed by other markets around the world.

"We're very bullish about the new Prius," Bob Carter, group vice president of Toyota Motor Sales, told Reuters in an interview this week.

He said internal research showed that 93 percent of Prius owners plan to stay with the Prius when they buy their next car, making the model the industry leader in owner satisfaction.

Taking a major step toward its goal of selling 1 million hybrid vehicles a year soon after 2010, Carter said Toyota would sell the new Prius in 80 countries, nearly double the number of markets where the current version is available.

Toyota has sold 1.7 million hybrid vehicles globally since it blazed the trail with the first Prius in late 1997. Honda Motor Co, which introduced its first hybrid, the Insight, two years behind Toyota, has sold just under 300,000 hybrids total.

(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim, editing by Peter Bohan)