Making the right car for all customers will underpin Toyota’s product plans and powertrain mix moving forward
Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda has spoken about his company’s perceived reticence to shift to an EV-centric product mix, suggesting that electric vehicle uptake will not happen as quickly as government bodies – and Toyota’s competitors – think.
The 66-year-old, who sees himself as a ‘car guy’, pointed to the long-proclaimed but slow-to-arrive wave of autonomous driving by way of comparison.
“Just like the fully autonomous cars that we are all supposed to be driving by now, EVs are just going to take longer to become mainstream than media would like us to believe,” Toyoda (below, at a previous event) said at a US dealer conference in Las Vegas.
“In the meantime, you have many options for customers.”
A lack of EV infrastructure, high prices and regional variety of choice were also discussed as potential obstacles to a faster-paced rollout.
Toyota claims it will spend US$70 billion ($107.7 billion) over the next nine years in the area of electrified vehicles, with half that amount earmarked for battery-electric vehicle (BEV) technology.
It says it will have 15 BEVs on sale by 2025, and it is targeting 3.5 million worldwide sales of BEVs by 2030. This equates to a third of its global annual sales.
Its first EV, the bZ4X, will launch in Australia next year, with a potential range of 516km from a single charge.
By way of comparison, Ford – a much smaller company than Toyota – is targeting sales of 1.5 million BEVs by 2030, against an investment of US$30 billion ($46b). This represents 40 per cent of its global sales.
It already has three electric vehicles in-market, including the Australian-bound e-Transit.
Toyota claims it has thus far prevented the emission of more than 145 million tonnes of CO2, thanks to the sales of more than 20 million hybrid vehicles worldwide.
It also says that this is the equivalent of the impact of 5.5 million EVs.
“Toyota can produce eight 40-mile (55km) plug-in hybrids for every one 320-mile (500km) battery electric vehicle and save up to eight times the carbon emitted into the atmosphere,” said Toyoda, who also expressed concerns about the shortage of battery-grade nickel and lithium over the coming decade.
It will also continue its R&D efforts in the hydrogen space.
The remarks of the global CEO mirror those of Toyota Australia sales and marketing boss Sean Hanley, who said recently “we all want carbon neutrality, we all want to get down to zero emissions, but you’ve got to do it in a practical and well-thought-out way.”
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