Toyota's CEO blasts electric cars: Overhyped, emits more carbon dioxide

At the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association's year-end news conference, Toyota Motor Corp. chief Akio Toyoda slammed electric vehicles, calling them overhyped and claiming they would stifle business, require huge investments and emit more carbon dioxide.

Toyoda said Japan would run out of electricity in the summer if all cars ran on electricity. He said the infrastructure needed to support a fleet made up entirely of electric vehicles would cost Japan between $135 billion and $358 billion. He also said that if Japan banned gasoline-powered cars too hastily, "the current business model of the auto industry would collapse," resulting in the loss of millions of jobs.

"The more electric cars we produce, the more serious carbon dioxide emissions will be." Akio Toyoda believes that if all cars in Japan are powered by electricity, there may be a power shortage in the summer. At the same time, the infrastructure required for a full transition to electric vehicles will cost 14 trillion to 37 trillion yen (about 885 billion to 234 billion yuan).

It is reported that Japan's electricity is mainly supplied by burning coal and natural gas. The more electric vehicles are produced, the greater the demand for electricity, which leads to more serious carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, if the government forcibly bans fuel vehicles, ordinary consumers will pay higher costs.

Toyoda also pointed out that if the Japanese government is too hasty in banning fuel-powered vehicles, Japan's existing business model for automobiles will collapse and even lead to millions of people losing their jobs.

Despite the criticism of electric vehicles by its boss, Toyota Group is moving towards electric vehicles in an all-round way, and Akio Toyoda's remarks are also seen as buying time for the company to smoothly transition its technology. However, unlike other manufacturers who use lithium-ion battery pure electric models as their development technology route, hybrid models and hydrogen fuel cell models are still the focus of Toyota Motor.

In April this year, Toyota Motor and BYD jointly established BYD Toyota Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd. Toyota also announced that global electric vehicle sales will reach 5.5 million by 2025, five years ahead of the original plan.

Zhang also said he was worried that government regulations would make cars "a flower high up in the sky" that ordinary people could never reach.

Akio may be trying to push the Japanese government not to ban internal combustion engine cars like other countries. Japan is rumored to set 2035 as the deadline for internal combustion engine cars to be sold domestically. It is unclear whether hybrids and plug-in hybrids will still be allowed like in the UK.

This may be the main reason for Toyota's attack on electric vehicles. Toyota has long been a proponent of hybrids, which it sees as a safe transition to electrification. When governments around the world began to ban internal combustion engine vehicles, Toyota pledged to sell cars using solid-state batteries by 2025.

 
Toyota once tried to sell electric vehicles using Tesla's battery packs and motors, but gave up long ago and never explained why.

Toyoda's move may be an attempt to push the Japanese government not to ban internal combustion engine vehicles like other countries have done.