oyota says it got no Japanese government money to develop the Prius gas-electric hybrid vehicle. Chrysler says it did _ or at least got a lot of support.
Japanese government officials said Thursday that Toyota Motor Corp. received support only in government rebates for Prius buyers, but zero funding for developing the popular model.
The trans-Pacific controversy started with a March 24 Business Week report that quoted Jim Press, vice chairman and president of Chrysler LLC and a former board member at Toyota, as saying, ''The Japanese government paid for 100 percent of the development of the battery and hybrid system that went into the Toyota Prius.''
Toyota denied the report _ and the Japanese government backs Toyota's account.
Sosuke Tanaka, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said there is no case in which Toyota got monetary aid for developing the Prius, according to ministry records.
''Toyota developed its own technology,'' he told The Associated Press. ''So please talk to Toyota about research and development.''
Toyota got a bit of a perk from a government rebate for Prius buyers, who each got 250,000 yen ($2,400) in cash, according to the ministry.
The subsidy program started in 1998, dropped gradually to 100,000 yen ($970) per buyer in 2006, and ended last year. The Prius first went on sale in 1997.
Chrysler overnight defended Press, who worked for 37 years at Toyota before leaving for Chrysler last September.
In a statement on Chrysler's media blog, it said Press ''was not speaking negatively of Toyota'' but ''referenced the close cooperation between the Japanese government and Japanese industry.''
''He said the Japanese government strongly supported R&D (research and development) investment in battery development, and the Prius and other Japanese models benefited from that investment in industry,'' the statement said.
Press would like to see similar cooperation between government and industry in the U.S., Chrysler said.
Toyota, Japan's No. 1 automaker, does indeed have a close relationship with the government. Toyota executives routinely sit on government panels. Former President Hiroshi Okuda's name was tossed around last month as the head of the Bank of Japan when legislators couldn't agree on a candidate.
Toyota officials appear to feel a sense of responsibility to national welfare, in what may be a parallel for the role General Motors Corp. plays in the U.S.
But Toyota denies that it got money from the government for developing the Prius, which has become the world's top-selling hybrid at a cumulative 962,000 vehicles over the last decade.
Irv Miller, Group Vice President, Corporate Communications, at Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc., says Press got it wrong.
''I suspect that when he scrolls back through the pages of his memory, Jim will recognize that fact,'' he said Wednesday on the company blog.
''The truth is that the development of Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive system, and the batteries that go with it, was accomplished entirely by Toyota's in-house R&D and its partner, Panasonic EV, without outside support,'' Miller said.
Efforts to develop the world's first mass-produced, commercially sold gas-electric hybrid began nearly 15 years ago _ long before hybrids were even seen as an easy, practical alternative. Toyota engineers say they were stunned by the daunting task.
The Japanese government invests in green energy, such as the fuel cell, which runs on hydrogen, and other experimental projects. It doles out about 500 million yen ($4.9 million) a year on clean-diesel development, in which Japanese automakers have fallen behind.