Toyota Motor Corp. Chairman Akio Toyoda is throwing cold water on the hopes of liberal green energy proponents about the ultimate reach of electric vehicles, which he says will never become the dominant form of vehicles on the road.
At a business event in Japan, Toyoda, the current chairman and former CEO of Toyota, and the grandson of the company’s founder, insisted that electric vehicles relying solely on battery power just aren’t suitable for most people and won’t supersede gas-powered vehicles.
During his remarks, Toyoda said that “no matter how much progress [battery electric vehicles] make,” hybrids, gas-powered, and fuel cell vehicles will remain more popular and will constitute about 70 percent of the market, according to CarScoops, a website that focuses on the automotive industry.
Carscoops cited a Googe translation of a report originally published Tuesday by the Toyota Times, a company website.
Toyoda added that this is why Toyota Motors has not gone all-in on electric vehicles, according to CarScoops.
And in what could have been seen as a direct slap at governments, including the Biden administration, the auto-making chief went on to say that markets will decide the reach of EVs, not the politicians who are trying to push EVs on car buyers with huge taxpayer-backed subsidies.
“That’s why Toyota Motor Corporation, which is competing all over the world, has a full lineup of multi-pathway products,” Toyoda said, according to CarScoops.
“Customers — not regulations or politics — should make that decision,” he told his audience, according to Bloomberg.
Toyoda went on to add that with so many parts of the world living with inefficient — or even non-existent — electric power grids, an EV is simply not a good universal option.
Should the government stop incentivizing electric vehicles?
This is not to say that Toyota Motors is refusing to manufacture EVs.
The company expects to sell 1.5 million EVs annually by 2026, and perhaps as many as 3.5 million by 2030, according to Inside EVs, a website that describes itself as geared toward “fans of electric cars, plug-in hybrids and alternative-energy vehicles of all shapes and sizes.”
“Last year, EVs accounted for around 18% of all new vehicle sales globally,” Inside EVs added.
Toyoda, though, did issue an ominous warning.
He said that banks may stop loaning to companies that don’t go all-in on the green agenda, according to Yahoo Finance.
Toyoda has been a critic of an all-EV future for some time.
In 2022, he insisted that ending the manufacture of gas-powered vehicles was a premature decision and said EVs simply are not feasible for use by a majority of car drivers.
He added that he was a member of the “silent majority” of car makers who are dubious over the immediate future of EVs.
“People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority,” Toyoda said. “That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”
And last year he pointed to the slowdown in EV sales as evidence that people are “finally seeing reality” and coming to understand that EVs aren’t as wonderful as they are being touted.
