Hiroshi Okuda, former head of Japanese automaker Toyota, credited with championing the pioneering Prius hybrid brand and turning the company into a global giant, has died aged 93, the firm said Wednesday.

Okuda took the reins of the struggling firm in 1995 as the first person from outside the founding family in decades, and pushed innovative products such as the RAV4 and Prius.

At the time, the viability of electric vehicles as a large market was a pipedream and the Prius was the world's first mass-produced petrol and electric hybrid.

The segment, still dominated today by Japanese firms, has won new popularity in recent years among customers put off by high prices for pure EVs and expensive fuel.

Okuda also oversaw the opening of Toyota factories abroad on the firm's way to overtaking General Motors as the world's largest automaker by vehicle sales.

The outspoken Okuda, a black belt in karate, also headed Japan's largest business lobby Keidanren and was for years a close government adviser.

Okuda also once crossed a jungle to meet leftist guerrillas in the Philippines when he ran Toyota's local operations there in the early 1970s, Bloomberg News reported.

"Everyone is different. But what I can say about Toyota is that before I became president, the company was considered to be very conservative, so I have tried to make us more aggressive," he told the New York Times in 1998.

Toyota confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Okuda had passed away but gave no further details.