A Toyota employee cleans a Prius on display at the automaker's showroom in Tokyo on Friday. The Prius, a gas-electric hybrid, was No. 1 in its ranking of sales by vehicle models.

TOKYO — The Toyota Prius is so sought after in Japan it is the first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle to top annual sales, with buyers willing to wait six months for deliveries of the curvaceous "green" car

The Prius has caught on in the U.S. and other parts of the world as well, although not with quite the same passionate intensity as it has in Japan, Toyota's home market.

Its success underlines the shift among consumers to embrace green auto technology that appears to go beyond a simple money-saving response to the ups and downs of gasoline prices.

But Toyota also can expect competition to heat up this year, with rivals readying fuel-efficient models, including the Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle from General Motors.

The Japan Automobile Dealers Association said Friday that Toyota's Prius was No. 1 in its ranking of sales by vehicle models — with 208,876 Prius cars sold in 2009, nearly three times the numbers sold the previous year.

Globally, Prius sales last year rose 41 percent to about 404,000 vehicles from the previous year, according to Toyota. Prius sales in North America fell 12 percent to 144,300 last year, but that was amid a big overall auto slump, and sales are expected to recover.

In Japan, the Prius easily outsold the No. 2 hybrid, the Honda Insight, at 93,283 for the year, and ranking fifth in overall Japan sales. Coming in second for overall car sales was Honda's Fit, followed by the Toyota Vitz. Neither are hybrids but both are small and fuel efficient models.