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In recent years, many various energy sources have been investigated as replacements for traditional automotive fossil fuels to help reduce CO₂ emissions, respond to instabilities in the supply of fossil fuels, and reduce emissions of air pollutants in urban areas. Toyota Motor Corporation considers the plug-in hybrid vehicle, which can use electricity efficiently, to be the most practical current solution to these issues. For this reason, Toyota began sales of the Prius plug-in hybrid in early 2012 in both the U.S. and Japan. This is the first plug-in hybrid vehicle to be mass-produced by Toyota Motor Corporation. Prior to this, in December 2009, Toyota sold 650 plug-in hybrid vehicles through lease programs for verification testing in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. The system of the recently launched mass-produced vehicle underwent major improvements in response to the results of this verification testing. As a result, EV range was increased with a smaller battery.