Toyota’s chairman doubles down on his electric car skepticism, forecasting that EV adoption will peak at just 30%

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.

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At this point the dude is just grasping for anything that will to justify the stupid business decisions that he’s made. 30% is a shit load, and something a sane business person would be excited about trying to capture.
Before nepotism appointed him to CEO, the company launched the Prius. That thing was exciting and innovative when it came out.
Under his leadership the Prius brand became a synonym for boredom, he relinquished Toyota’s electric powertrain lead to other manufacturers, and the brand produced a lot of uninspired vehicles in general.
This guy was at the helm during the years of Toyota’s decline. Forgive me if I don’t pay any attention to him.
- Prius is still rocking all over the place and it says once again in his statement right here the guy likes hybrids. There's currently lots of hybrids out and about, and I agree with the guy. At least until battery tech changes. A hybrid battery is a few grand to replace and there's no range anxiety or worrying about plugging in anywhere. An EV with a decent range is $10,000 to $25,000 to replace an 1,100 lb battery in and it's expensive and troublesome if you don't live at a place where you can plug in at home in your garage.
  As to prius being boring....I don't even know what you're talking about. What do you want it to do? They're still really popular and have been going for over 20 years with several different models and some that can be plugged in. How is it supposed to be exciting?
  Also, toyota achieved a couple years ago something it had never done before. Top GM in sales in the US to get the number one spot. So with their "boring cars and their crappy ceo" they seem to be doing great.
  
  "...I agree with the guy. At least until battery tech changes."
  This point is important. There are not enough rare minerals to make EVs for everyone with current battery tech
- It's his hand to play. If he's wrong, he's wrong and will find out.
- Lmaooooo
What data is being used to make this statement?
- I guess the data that says they spent too much money on hydrogen tech that is now unlikely to pay off.
- Even if there’s no data to back it, isn’t 30% a lot?? I know plenty of markets where if you tell one of the leaders they could capture 30% of they’d be more than happy to spend billions in R&D. So just at face value the man is smoking some copium hard.
  
  There’s no way one company would be able to capture the entirety of that market, at best it would be like 20 brands splitting the 30% and that’s not an appealing prospect.
  Really though the Toyota clan is saying this because they spent a shit ton on hydrogen vehicle tech that they want to catch on rather than electric battery tech that they neglected
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills - wasn't Toyota all up in the news recently about its new battery technology that was going to revolutionize EVs? Why yes, yes it was.
- I think they're just putting out shit trying to create FUD so people are less likely to buy EVs.
  
  Bingo, they bet on the wrong horse, and now they try to use their market share to FUD EV's
He's clearly aware of the "magic gas" cheat that allows infinite additional fossil fuel to be harvested from the map.
Edit: Or he's confident that Hydrogen will pick up the slack.
- The Hindenburg was coated in thermite.
  
  Yeah. I don't seriously mean to put down Hydrogen as an important fuel source.
  Though I do think it'll have a slow adoption curve because of cultural concerns for safety, and investors and innovators will need to plan to invest for the long term.
He's still pissed their early collaboration with Tesla yielded nothing but a new competitor.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Tesla-20-years-on-EV-leader-s-rise-sparked-by-Toyota-partnership
I mean okay...I guess I'm wondering what he thinks that some how the billion people who live in areas without electricity is going to afford a new hybrid or even more expensive hydrogen vehicle that has even less infrastructure than EV's.
- He doesn't. He thinks they'll continue driving old Camrys and Tacomas.
I haven't bought an EV (or any other car) because I'm waiting for a car manufacturer to make the car I want in a plug in variant of some kind (also less telematics). Who doesn't want to be their own gas station--self sufficient with Solar, anyone?
Get your shit together, car industry. Especially you Toyota.
- You’re gonna be waiting a looong time.
- I'm waiting for a car manufacturer to make the car I want in a plug in variant of some kind
  What sort of car are you waiting for, out of interest?
Booooooooooooooooooooo
But don't worry, they're "too big to fail". They'll get bailout after bailout until they can stand on their own again after a transition made far more painful by their foot dragging. So in the end it's the Japanese tax payer that will foot the bill.
IDK why hydrogen just hasn't captured any mind share. Seems like a great technology.
Someone will be along in a moment to tell me all about embrittlement and blue hydrogen, yet conglomerates are pouring many billions into water cracking infrastructure right now.
- Huge energy losses in the conversion of electricity to hydrogen. Also for passenger cars there are no clear benefits. 350kW chargers provide hundreds of kilometers of range in under 20 minutes.
  
  In some places (like Western Australia), solar electricity is very cheap, making the inefficiencies of conversion economically viable.
  The benefit is storage and transport of energy.
- I've always considered hydrogen cool but ive also assumed it needs huge infrastructure changes so it can be supplied to the general population. Some EVs you can plug in an outlet and putting up charging station is super easy.
  I want to get off gas yesterday and EV is simply the quickest way imo.
  
  Sure ok, but we're building infrastructure right now.
- Hydrogen is great on paper until you start looking into the details.
- hydrogen cars have to store the fuel in 70000 PSI tanks. theres only 2 stations in my major city area that sell it, and they are often unavailable due to maintenance or supply issues. if the car needs service the only place that will touch it is an hour drive away.
  
  It's almost as though you need infrastructure.
- Put a 10,000 psi tank of hydrogen in your car, or a tank of heavy, reactive metal hydride. Also, while hydrogen isn't a greenhouse gas, releasing unburned hydrogen into the atmosphere causes more GHG to be formed. Humans are terrible at keeping unburned gasses from leaking.
- IDK why hydrogen just hasn't captured any mind share. Seems like a great technology.
  It’s great science but it’s hard technology.
  It almost requires extremely high pressure or cryogenic storage and it diffuses through everything.
- Hydrogen cars have limited performance, are overly complex and there's no infrastructure. For an average consumer they make zero sense
  
  This is a pretty vanilla statement. You could say this about literally any new tech.
- We can go back and forth about which ought to be a better technology, but one is practical now while the other isn’t. One has much smaller infrastructure requirements than the other. One let’s us refuel at home while the other doesn’t
  I personally will be happy to see almost the entires gasoline industry disappear. Imagine making such an impact on ground and air pollution, when the goal is simply to reduce carbon emissions. Imagine how much it simplifies all of our lives to just plug in every night
  
  EVs only have smaller infrastructure requirements if you ignore power production.
  One may be practical now but, according to this article, we're approaching the limits of practical applications.
- Someone will be along in a moment to tell me all about embrittlement and blue hydrogen
  Why ask the question if you already know the answer?
  The reason it hasn't taken off is because it's a fundamentally very difficult technology to safely build. Embrittlement is a fact of physics, and it's extremely difficult to design around, especially at scale.
  And the fact that there is almost zero global capacity to manufacture green hydrogen means that there is little point in subsidising it from an environmentalist point of view.
  Hydrogen will have its uses, maybe in niches like aviation fuel where requirements are very specific and it's possible to exercise much tighter control of the infrastructure chain. But it's just not a competitive technology for replacing petrol and diesel in general purpose road vehicles.
  
  Why ask the question if you already know the answer?
  Because these problems are not prohibitive. Any tech has challenges.
  A brief perusal of anything about embrittlement suggests that it's very manageable. There are hydrogen powered vehicles driving around right now. How is it that their tanks to not crumble or shatter?
  And the fact that there is almost zero global capacity to manufacture green hydrogen means that there is little point in subsidising it from an environmentalist point of view
  Imagine saying "There's not a lot of computers around, therefore this internet isn't going to be viable". In Western Australia there are three large scale hydrogen production facilities under construction. The one nearest me will cover 15,000 km^2 and produce 3.5 million tonnes of hydrogen per annum. Do you really want to bet against mining consortiums contributing many billions of dollars to hydrogen production?
- Critics of hydrogen cars are repeating the same criticisms of EVs just before they took off. Same can be said of wind power or solar power. In reality, it's just the same anti-green and anti-progress BS you hear about any new green technology. It's all the same story.
  
  Take it easy, it's a bit more complex than that. Slow as it might be, everyone understands you can charge an EV even with just a regular 15A 120V plug. Stuck at your father in laws out in the country? They've still got a plug.
  Generally, people are uncomfortable with high pressure explosive gases. I think overall, hydrogen gas a better shot in industrial/heavy trucking markets than consumer transport.
  
  "Hydrogen will never work, there are no hydrogen gas stations in my city"
  Lordy.
  
  Meanwhile EVs have taken up a significant share of the market while hydrogen is still niche.
  
  LOL
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.
Wait so you’re telling me over priced cars aren’t going to take over? Wow color me surprised.

114 comments