By Yoko Kubota TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp is hitching its future to green cars, investing billions of dollars in gasoline-electric hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles, but for now its record profit performance is being powered largely by a gas-guzzling U.S. market. In the United States, relatively cheap gasoline prices helped to spur brisk 9 percent growth in industry-wide light truck sales in the first half of the year, making that one of the fastest-growing major global market segments - accounting for about one-tenth of global vehicle sales. Toyota outperformed the overall U.S. market, moreover, with its fresh model line-up - the Highlander SUV was redesigned in February and the Tundra pick-up got a facelift last September - powering a 10 percent rise in its January-June U.S. light truck sales to nearly half a million vehicles. "The U.S. is one of the few bright spots contributing to year-on-year profit growth for Toyota while it faces a slowdown in places like Japan and Thailand," said Koichi Sugimoto, an auto analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley.
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