Toyota’s latest move in its work to harm the environment involves an internal platform where it uses video games to spread propaganda among its North American employees, enticing them with prizes to join lobbying efforts to loosen environmental rules around the automotive industry.
We’ve covered Toyota’s anti-environment lobbying efforts many times before.
For an inexhaustive list of how Toyota lobbies to harm the environment, the company:
- Is the largest auto industry funder of climate deniers in the US (not counting individuals – Elon Musk takes that crown),
- Consistently ranks alongside oil and gas giants as one of the worst entities in the world on anti-climate lobbying,
- Spreads anti-science disinformation in its marketing,
- Spreads anti-EV propaganda to Japanese children through schools,
- Was the last company to drop a lawsuit denying California’s right to set stronger pollution standards (despite having lobbied to fracture those standards and make business more difficult),
- Lies about its electrification efforts, causing consumer confusion,
- And has continued its greenwashing efforts after promising change.
Now, an excellent report by the Guardian details how Toyota uses internal communications to encourage its employees to join its propaganda efforts, with anti-EV and anti-environment propaganda in the form of video games where employees can earn points and prizes.
Toyota calls the platform “Toyota Policy Drivers,” and it’s available to some 10,000 employees across North America. The games were created by LGND, a software firm that has also made projects for defense contractors Aurex and Bechtel.
It consists of several videos telling Toyota’s side of the story – like Toyota’s insistence that hybrids pollute less than EVs, which is incorrect – and links to participate by reaching out to public representatives.
But that’s just normal corporate propaganda stuff. What’s different about Toyota’s platform is the gamification of the process, encouraging employees to earn points and play video games while digesting this propaganda.
Video games used as anti-environment propaganda
Games include Monster Mansion, Adventure Quest, Star Quest, and Dragon Quest (no, not the long-running and popular RPG – we wonder if trademark authorities might be interested in that one).
Toyota cycles games in and out each year, but each has a similar goal of showing propaganda videos in exchange for points. The videos were publicly visible until this morning. After the Guardian published its article, Toyota password protected them.
The goal of the game “Star Quest” is to save Politerra, a planet at risk of destruction. Ironically, the way you earn points in Star Quest is to take political actions encouraging the destruction of the Earth that the players actually live on in real life.
Playing the “games” can earn you points, which can be redeemed for stickers and t-shirts, or even trips. One employee says he earned cupcakes and a trip to Washington, DC.
Adam Zuckerman of Public Citizen had harsh words for the program, which he called “dystopian” and said “treats employees like children.” Specifically referring to Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s VP of public affairs for North America, Zuckerman said:
It’s fitting that Ciccone calls himself a wartime consigliere because he has gone to war against the standards that protect our communities and the air that we breathe. Like the mafiosos that he fashions himself after, he is pressuring his own workers into doing his bidding against the common good. Ciccone should quit cosplaying mafia, end his dystopian game of poisoning our air, and stop blocking the green vehicles of the future.
Toyota’s actions and its public image diverge
Toyota’s propaganda contradicts its long-held public image. For decades now, Toyota has been considered by the public as one of the more environmentally-friendly automakers, first starting with its small cars in the 70s and later due to the Prius, the vehicle that is known for popularizing the conventional gas hybrid powertrain. In the early 2000s, the Prius was among the most efficient vehicles available.
However, the Prius is no longer particularly efficient comparatively. Just about any electric car is significantly more efficient than a Prius – even the ridiculous Hummer EV roughly matches the Prius in energy efficiency at 53mpge vs. 57mpg. Also, conventional hybrids get 100% of their energy from fossil fuels, and are thus inherently incompatible with climate solutions.
Despite Toyota’s false claims that gas-powered hybrids are the answer to reducing emissions, its own numbers show that its emissions have steadily increased over the years. And its average US fleet mpg is consistently middling-to-poor, according to the EPA’s automotive trends report.
When Toyota owners are educated about Toyota’s opposition to environmental policy, it results in a 32% reduction in favorability for the brand. A large majority of Toyota owners want the company to support stronger environmental policy.
Similarly, a recent appearance of Toyota’s chairman, Akio Toyoda, decked out in US campaign gear supporting Donald Trump helped many in the public to recognize Toyota’s friendliness with anti-environment actors. As former CEO, Toyoda was largely responsible for the company’s current failure to adopt electric vehicles.
But Toyota has dug in its feet in defending hybrid vehicles, which it considers its own territory, whereas electric vehicles are the territory of other brands. So it twists itself into knots trying to defend more-polluting vehicles, despite the harm that they cause to everyone who lives on Earth – yes, including Toyota employees, who breathe the same air and live in the same disrupted climate as the rest of us.
Toyota laughably claims this corporate-led effort is “grassroots”
While Toyota says that employees don’t have to participate, the combination of incentives and implicit pressure from higher-ups means that employees who would not have otherwise lobbied against the public interest would then be encouraged to do so.
It calls the effort “grassroots advocacy,” even though it is being coordinated and pushed upon employees by one of the largest corporate entities on the planet. It also allows employees to participate during working hours, indicating that it sees these videogames as a work activity, rather than natural grassroots advocacy.
Indeed, the company brags about what it sees as the success of the program, taking credit for various harmful policy changes, like republicans’ illegal attempt to force dirty air on 12 US states. Toyota also used the platform to oppose EPA exhaust rules that would save Americans $100 billion in fuel costs, wrongly calling it an “EV mandate,” despite that the Biden rule is actually technology neutral (which Toyota claims to support, even though it opposed a technology neutral measure in practice).
Perhaps now, with the knowledge of yet another way that Toyota spreads anti-environment propaganda, some of the environmental sheen of this company can start to tarnish in the public eye.
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments