European pension funds attack Toyota for not going ‘all in’ on electric cars

> I thought the goal of a pension fund is to ensure that people have pensions?

Yes, through an investment portfolio, and this article states that the 4 pension funds in question have a combined $300 million in shares invested in Toyota.

The article says:

‘Toyota is jeopardising its valuable brand by lobbying against much-needed climate related regulation of the auto industry,” said Anders Schelde, AkademikerPension’s chief investment officer last week. “What is the science based argument for their position, which is what we expect from companies if they are going against most expert views on the role of battery electric vehicles and the required timeline for phaseout of fossil fuel cars.’

It is not an energy source.

There are much better existing storage mechanisms.

It burns with an invisible flame in daylight, further adding to the dangers already posed by leaks, fires, and explosions.

Hydrogen cars in California cannot take road trips out of the state because there is no place for them to fill up in many other states.

There have been at least two recent major explosion incidents involving hydrogen tanker trucks in California. One of which was kept somewhat under the public’s radar as a truck incident by spinning it as an incident at a hydrogen facility, which is true, but misleading imho.

I've seen hydrogen cars at filling stations that were brought there by tow trucks.

Hydrogen cars are so expensive the manufacturers have to heavily subsidize them. I'm not sure they even sell them; I think they are all leased.

Hydrogen is so difficult to deal with, people who produce it might even have to give it away in some places, depending on location, because nobody wants to deal with it.

Toyota has been out of step on this, and they are still faking out customers imho by using the term "electrified" which usually means hybrid, but fools people into thinking they are talking about BEVs.

Says you.

Personally I'd like to see more of this.

Perhaps it's less profitable than just going for the highest immediate ROI and who cares about the impact on the wider world. More fair pay & conditions, less exploiting workers. More supporting local communities where they operate, less profit-shifting/tax-avoidance. More caring about environmental impact, less polluting.

I think a lower ROI is worth it if we can achieve these things.

If Toyota is in the business of selling cars, they're going to have problems when large swaths of the population are incentivized to buy electric cars, and Toyota has a limited selection.

So, these pension funds are probably right to be worried that Toyota has dropped the ball on this.

They've got great hybrid-gasoline vehicles, but are insisting that the future is Hydrogen fuel-cell for normal passenger vehicles.

The only ones that benefit from that are Toyota and the fossil-fuel industry who would love for Hydrogen to be the next fuel, because then they can keep their LNG operations going for longer.