Toyota on electric vehicles: so far the ends don’t justify the means
Until now, it was believed that one of the largest automakers on the planet, the Japanese corporation Toyota Motor, neglected battery electric vehicles due to the huge sums spent on the development of alternative vehicles using hybrid power plants and fuel cells. It turns out that the company’s management considers the expansion of electric vehicles to be premature for economic reasons.
The statement of the head of Toyota Motor Akio Toyoda (Akio Toyoda) at the conference of the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association cites the resource Barron’s with reference to the publication in The Wall Street Journal. According to the president of the company, politicians who urge to switch to the use of electric transport as a matter of urgency have little idea of what efforts will be required to implement the declared programs within the specified time frame.
For example, in order to get rid of cars with only internal combustion engines as the power plant in the structure of new car sales by 2035, as desired by politicians, Japan will have to spend hundreds of billions of US dollars on infrastructure development, according to Akio Toyoda. Charging stations should be widespread. Power plants must increase their generated capacity.
Automakers will have to invest hundreds of billions of US dollars in new manufacturing equipment and traction battery plants. Volkswagen and Toyota account for roughly 20% of global light-vehicle sales. The German automaker has announced its readiness to invest $ 40 billion in the development and production of electric vehicles in the next five years, and by the end of the decade, it expects to bring the share of the revenue from sales of electric vehicles to 25%. In other words, in ten years Volkswagen could spend $ 80 billion on the corresponding goals, and across the entire industry, expenses will proportionally grow to $ 700 billion with a transport electrification level of no more than 25%. To break the 50% bar by 2030, more than a trillion US dollars will have to be spent
Toyota is just taking a sober view of the EV expansion, offering as temporary alternative hybrid solutions that combine internal combustion engines and electric motors with an accompanying battery pack. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will also find widespread use in the future, albeit not in the passenger segment. They will demonstrate their advantages in the field of freight and rail transport. By the way, Toyota is no longer the main supporter of “hydrogen cars” – its successor generation Mirai is inferior in terms of sales to Korean competitors of the Hyundai brand.
