Has anybody ever claimed the auto industry will go 100% electric anytime soon? Feels like Toyota is trying to setup a straw man.
More surprising to me was that the Toyota CEO is named Toyoda.
More surprising to me was that the Toyota CEO is named Toyoda.
At COP26, leading automotive companies, businesses, governments, and investors agreed to work towards all new cars and vans being zero emission vehicles by 2035 in leading markets and by 2040 globally.
New Polling Shows U.S. Voters Support Full Transition to Electric Cars by 2030
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-polling-shows-u...
Such commitments can be reversed by approximately 57000 people in the specific counties in battleground states
And when the US pulls out of something everyone follows suit for obvious reasons.
Yes, they are all rent seeking trying to get tax payers to pay for the capital outlays for the transition.
>New Polling Shows U.S. Voters Support
There are a few issues with their poll[1] and their sampling, by looking at their responses it appears they surveyed primary car drivers not SUV or Trucks, while SUV's and Trucks are the top selling class of vehicles this leads me to believe they have problems with their sampling and have a bias towards people that would naturally be more prone to accept BEV replacement
I also take issue with the phrasing of their questions around the public policy being proposed for 2030.
[1]https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5888d6bad2b857a30238e...
As a result the Japanese carmakers have shied from investing in EVs since the soft edict from top was to build hydrogen instead.
It’s not a coincidence that the first Japanese car company that jumped right into EVs was Nissan when it was being headed by Ghosn, who isn’t Japanese himself. (The Prius doesn’t count…that was Toyota’s answer to CA’s requirements, and was wildly successful beyond what they expected. The fact that Toyota hardly built on the Prius brand for 2 decades tells one all they need to know about how the Japanese automakers staying away from EVs isn’t just a business decision, but is being driven by other considerations).
That sounded a bit US-centric - so I did a quick Google and found that belief is incorrect:
Sales in Japan were extremely strong from the outset, buoyed by Prius winning Japan’s Car of the Year award for 1998. By May 2000 more than 40,000 units had been sold and production capacity was increased to 3,000 a month in anticipation of its arrival in refreshed form (XW11 chassis) in export markets.
Initial testing in the U.S., in 1999, before release to the general public nearly sidelined the Prius before its debut. The few drivers involved in the testing were less than impressed. That, combined with no way to determine a viable buyer market for the Prius, almost halted the car’s journey outside of Japan.
[USA 2000]Nevertheless, the Prius caught on. Toyota was pleasantly surprised that sales the first year exceeded projections and when some Hollywood stars took notice (and purchased the vehicles), things only go better.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/08/25/california-enacts-world-le...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gm-zero-emission...
"The European Union struck a deal on Thursday on a law to effectively ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, aiming to speed up the switch to electric vehicles and combat climate change."
I want to see that!
I'll be surprised if there are no fossil fuel cars being made or sold in China and Russia in 15 years. Even in the US, I'm pretty sure the defense department hasn't set a deadline for eliminating fossil fuels from their fleet and they buy a lot of vehicles, making them one of the planet's largest polluters.