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The leadership change at Toyota doesn’t appear to have changed the automaker’s EV strategy.
Akio Toyoda recently announced his move to chairmanship after 14 years as CEO of the automaker founded by his grandfather, with Koji Sato sworn in as Toyota’s next CEO. But automakers’ stance on EVs—that they aren’t the only solution to tackling climate change—has remained consistent throughout the transition.
Toyota Prius XLE 2023
In a recent presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Toyota’s chief scientist Gill Pratt argued that the all-EV strategy announced by some automakers would fall short of their emission reduction goals, noted Automotive News.
Pratt’s argument, which you can watch here for updated form, or below as Toyota itself presents in December 2021, relies heavily on limited lithium supplies for batteries, which will force a choice between spreading available lithium across the many hybrid batteries available. smaller. or centralize them in a larger package for EVs.
Toyota fears a lithium deficit will stop the aggressive EV shift
Pratt offers a model that hypothesizes a fleet of 100 internal combustion vehicles with an average emission of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer traveled, and enough lithium to produce a battery capacity of 100 kwh.
If lithium were used for a single 100 kwh package, a fleet of 100 vehicles would still have 99 internal combustion vehicles and only one EV, resulting in an average emission of 248.5 g/km. If the same amount of lithium were used to make a 1.1-kwh battery pack, it would result in a 90 hybrid and an even greater reduction in overall emissions, to 205 g/km, Pratt said in his presentation.
This is in line with previous Toyota talking points, which have emphasized incorporating hybrids, as well as fuel cell powertrains and even hydrogen combustion engines, into overall emission reduction solutions rather than relying solely on EVs.
While a battery factory could be built in two or three years, according to Pratt, building a new lithium mine could take more than 15 years.
In a video released in November 2021, Pratt argues that trying different ideas for reducing emissions is the most pragmatic approach, since technological predictions are usually unreliable. He cited the hype around self-driving cars as a recent example, and noted that Toyota took a similar approach in that case, researching driver-assisted and autonomous-driving concepts rather than going all-in on the latter.
“The stakes for the climate crisis are too big to go wrong by focusing on too few possibilities,” he says in the video, noting that Toyota is investing in electric vehicles, but arguing that “diversified solutions will reduce more carbon emissions more quickly.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbImmT7udQM
However, while Toyota is investing in EVs, Toyoda’s outgoing CEO said he sees the US goal of 50% EV sales by 2030 as “very difficult”, and that 85% of Toyota vehicles will still have exhaust pipes by the end of the decade. Toyota’s resistance to California and other states looking for more EVs has also given the company some optics that have been much less favored by environmentalists in recent years.
Toyota’s EV launch has also taken on a volatile aspect recently. The automaker last fall reportedly halted some of its EV development as part of a broad evaluation. Recently Toyota seems to have given the go-ahead for a dedicated EV platform for the end of the decade, though this seems to have little to do with executive changes as Toyoda has made it clear it is coming.
Amid this report and the changes above, Toyota recently issued an update on how this may affect Toyota’s vehicle targets. But given the recent update of its argument, it may be coming soon.
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