Akio Toyoda, Toyota Motor’s chairman, has never been a huge fan of battery electric vehicles. Last October, as global sales of EVs started to slow down amid macroeconomic uncertainty, Toyoda crowed that people are “finally seeing reality” on EVs. Now, the auto executive is doubling down on his bearish forecast, boldly predicting that just three in 10 cars on the road will be powered by a battery.
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“The enemy is CO2,” Toyoda said, proposing a “multi-pathway approach” that doesn’t rely on any one type of vehicle. “Customers, not regulations or politics” should make the decision on what path to rely on, he said.
The auto executive estimated that around a billion people still live in areas without electricity, which limits the appeal of a battery electric vehicle. Toyoda estimated that fully electric cars will only capture 30% of the market, with the remainder taken up by hybrids or vehicles that use hydrogen technology.
Seems fair enough. I can imagine “first world” countries having much more than a 30% ev adoption rate especially in cities. For everywhere else though alot of the infrastructure that EVs rely on (power grids, electric charging stations, specialist mechanics, hell even well maintained roads) just doesn’t exist in a large enough capacity. For an international company like Toyota probably does make sense not to go all in on ev’s but to have a sizable fleet of both types of vehicles for all markets.