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In 1991, Hino Motors, Ltd. (Hino) launched the world's first hybrid city buses in the market. Thereafter, Hino has improved its hybrid vehicle technology and applied it to various commercial vehicles including city buses, sightseeing buses, medium-duty trucks and light-duty trucks. Recently, Hino has developed light-duty hybrid trucks, whose fuel efficiency has improved by 50% relative to its Diesel trucks. The significant improvement in fuel efficiency is achieved by four improvements in hybrid trucks. First, the hybrid system is improved: the change in the drive train layout, the relocation of a clutch, makes it possible to recoup the regenerative energy more efficiently. Second, the vehicle is also improved by the new hybrid engine, the reduction of the rotation speed of the engine during idling, and the improvement in the differential gear ratio. Third, new hybrid system controls are developed to bring benefits of the hybrid system to all drivers.

Hino Motors, Ltd. (Hino) launched the world's first hybrid city bus in 1991. Since then, the same hybrid technology has been refined and applied to a range of commercial vehicles, from city and tour buses to light and medium duty trucks, expanding the commercial hybrid vehicle line up. After 20 years of refining this technology, in 2011 Hino launched an all new light duty hybrid truck in Japan. An alternate version of the truck was developed to meet the particular needs of the North American market, differing from the Japanese model in several important features. The Japanese model's automated manual transmission was replaced with a fully automatic transmission, and the motor and inverter specifications were altered. This paper outlines the development process and introduces various characteristics of the technologies employed in the North American hybrid model.