Japanese automaker Toyota (TM) is a household name known for making some of the most popular and most dependable cars out on the road, but if one thing stands out about the popular brand today, it’s the company’s electric vehicle offerings.
While other huge automakers like General Motors, Hyundai, and Kia provide a mechanical cornucopia of EVs for their customers in the United States, Toyota offers just one electric vehicle in its lineup of gas-powered and hybrid cars: the bZ4X crossover SUV.
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As an EV slowdown threatens much of the auto industry’s plans to go electric, Toyota is reaping the benefits from a huge gamble on hybrid technology and may be inclined to keep itself there.
Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota Motor Corp., speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, June 3, 2024.
Toyoda’s warning to the EV masses
In remarks during the unveiling of a bust of the late Toyota chairman, Shoichiro Toyoda at Nagoya University in Japan, current Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda, his son, warned that a hard transition to a future where EVs are the sole offering, will cause devastating harm to the automotive workforce.
He finds that much harm will be done to those who work on engine technologies, especially the suppliers that produce such components.
“There are 5.5 million people involved in the automotive industry in Japan. Among them are those who have been doing engine-related (work) for a long time,” Toyoda said.
“If electric vehicles simply become the only choice, including for our suppliers, those people’s jobs would be lost.”
2024 Toyota bZ4X XLE
Toyota
Toyoda has long been a skeptic of electric vehicles and has argued on numerous occasions that there are multiple ways to tackle the threat of carbon emissions without sacrificing people’s mobility.
In a statement at a Toyota company event in January, the Chairman argued that EVs and hydrogen power “come as a set with infrastructure,” pointing out that many of its customers live in parts of the world with little to access to electricity.
“No matter how much progress BEVs make, I think they will still only have a 30 % market share,” said Toyoda. “Then, the remaining 70% will be HEVs [hybrid-electric vehicles], FCEVs [fuel cell electric vehicles], and hydrogen engines. And I think [gas] engine cars will definitely remain.”
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Toyota seems more compelled to make hybrids
In August 2024, a report surfaced that Toyota planned to convert most, if not all, of its gasoline-powered nameplates into models solely offered with hybrid powertrains across its Toyota and Lexus brands, but before it made that call, it argued that making hybrids would be much more economic sense than EVs.
According to an internal Toyota document shared with its U.S. dealer network and viewed by Jalopnik, the Toyota corporate body explained that its hesitation toward EVs is based on the lack of EV charging infrastructure, affordability, and, most importantly, a finite amount of critical resources like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite.
The bigwigs explained something they called the 1:6:90 rule, where considering the amount of raw materials needed for the battery in one battery-electric vehicle designed for 300+ miles of range, six plug-in hybrid batteries could be made or 90 batteries for hybrid-electric vehicles like the Prius.
The 2025 Toyota Camry at the Los Angeles Auto Show
“For the same limited resources, instead of replacing one internal combustion engine, you can replace 90,” the Toyota executives said.
“The overall carbon reduction of these 90 vehicles over their lifetimes is 37 times as much as a single battery-electric vehicle.”
Already, the brand has begun selling one of its bestselling models: the Camry midsize sedan with hybrid engines only.
According to the latest sales data, ‘electrified vehicles,’ a blanket term Toyota uses to describe hybrids, plug-in hybrids, pure electrics, and fuel cell cars, accounted for 48.4% of the brand’s total sale volume in September 2024. Toyota sold 710,060 out of the 1,729,519 vehicles, or 41.1% of the vehicles sold year-to-date.
Toyota Motor Co., which trades on the New York Stock Exchange as TM, will open Friday’s trading session at $174.35.
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