Toyota will invest $2 billion to develop electric vehicles in Indonesia, according to the country’s coordinating ministry for maritime affairs. But those plans will at least start with a focus on hybrids.
Toyota has been dragging their feet on new vehicle technology for some time now, seemingly happy to continue selling their antiquated gas-powered fleet, with no battery electric vehicles and only one plug-in hybrid and one fuel cell vehicle (powered by 95% fossil-sourced hydrogen) across their entire lineup.
But if you watch their recent ads, the deceptiveness of which we’ve covered before, you wouldn’t know this. Because they continue to misleadingly advertise their “self-charging” “hybrid electric Corolla” as if it’s anything other than a 100% fossil-powered gas guzzler. And in case it wasn’t apparent already: “self-charging” is not a real thing, as the entire concept violates the basic laws of physics.
Toyota announced that it is accelerating its electric vehicle plans by 5 years and partnering with new battery makers to secure supply as it unveiled images of upcoming all-electric cars.
However, the automaker’s electrification plan is still heavily focused on hybrids instead of all-electric vehicles.
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Toyota and Subaru, which is partly owned by the latter, have announced that they are partnering to develop a new electric platform in order to launch a couple of all-electric SUVs under each brand.
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Toyota is probably the least interested in battery-electric vehicles out of all the major automakers and in new comments this week, the company claimed that “nobody is selling electric vehicles at a profitable margin”.
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Toyota has unveiled new battery electric versions of its C-HR/IZOA at the Shanghai Auto Show. The models are set to hit the Chinese market in 2020.
Toyota is selling its electric vehicle tech to Chinese startup Singulato, according to a new report. Singulato plans to design a small EV based on Toyota’s short-lived eQ.
In an attempt to encourage the rest of the industry to make hybrid vehicles, Toyota announced that it is providing “nearly 24,000 licenses royalty-free” for its patents regarding electric components and systems to companies producing hybrid vehicles.
The move to keep hybrid vehicles relevant comes as the industry is massively shifting to all-electric vehicles and Toyota is falling behind in that transition.
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Toyota, which has a long history of being against all-electric vehicles, has produced another shameful anti-electric vehicle ad to sell its new Corolla hybrid.
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Toyota recently admitted that the Tesla Model 3 is affecting Prius sales, but we are now learning by just how much: Toyota says that it has a 9% owner defection rate in North America and it attributes about half of it to Tesla.
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Toyota and Panasonic have confirmed that they are starting a wide-ranging new battery joint-venture to manufacture and sell battery cells for electric vehicles.
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Panasonic, Tesla’s battery cell partner, is reportedly teaming up with Toyota to create an important electric vehicle battery cell venture in China and Japan.
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Tesla’s Model 3 is stealing away sales from a surprising range of vehicles and Toyota is admitting to seeing an impact on Prius sales.
As a premium car, you would think that it would more likely affect Lexus sales, but Toyota says “Tesla is creating an entirely new segment of vehicles.”
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Despite its early effort in electrification with the Prius and a partnership with Tesla, Toyota has famously been looking down on battery-electric vehicles in favor of hybrid and fuel cell vehicles.
Yet, the Japanese automaker says that all its models will be ‘electrified’ by 2025, but it’s being vague about what it means and it still doesn’t sound like it’s going to be all-electric.
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It’s no secret that Toyota is not a big fan of battery-electric vehicles as the Japanese automaker is heavily invested in hydrogen fuel cell technology and hybrid cars.
But now the company, though its Lexus brand, goes as far as trash talking all-electric vehicles in shameful hybrid vehicle advertising.
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As part of Toyota, Lexus has been following the lead of its parent company and hasn’t pushed hard for the electrification of its lineup.
Lexus has yet to release an all-electric vehicle despite virtually all premium brands, like its top German competitors Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, going electric with new vehicles.
The head of the brand, Yoshihiro Sawa, now says that he believes that it is still too soon for EVs and therefore, they are not falling behind but having a better approach to alternative powertrains.
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As a brand, Lexus has been suffering on the electric vehicle front due to being part of Toyota, which has until recently been too focused on hydrogen fuel cell to make electric vehicles.
But Toyota has now greenlit Lexus EVs and it unveiled a new crossover concept supporting an all-electric powertrain at the Detroit Auto Show this week.
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At CES in Las Vegas today, Toyota unveiled a new battery-electric multi-purpose autonomous platform concept that they aim to sell to new partners, including Amazon, DiDi, Mazda, Pizza Hut and Uber, for a multitude of different applications in their respective industries.
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After lagging behind the rest of the industry when it comes to electrification due to being entrenched in fuel cell hydrogen, Toyota is now announcing today a major expansion of its electric vehicle plans.
The Japanese automaker is aiming to launch 10 new BEVs worldwide by “the early 2020s” and it wants to have electric options throughout its entire lineup of cars by 2025.
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Panasonic has risen to the top position as a battery cell supplier for the auto industry through its partnership with Tesla, which has become the largest battery consumer in the world.
Now Toyota is courting the company for a battery partnership as the major Japanese automaker is playing catch up in the EV space.
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For years, Toyota has been betting on hydrogen fuel cell over battery-electric vehicles for its zero-emission vehicle strategy. It put the Japanese automaker behind in the electric transition in the industry.
Now Toyota admits that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who called hydrogen fuel cell “incredibly dumb”, “is right,” but the company is still heavily investing in the technology.
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Earlier this year, Toyota and Mazda announced their biggest electric vehicle commitment to date with a new $1.6 billion joint EV factory in the US.
Over 15 states have reportedly bid with incentive packages to get the project and we now learn that they are down to “3 or 4 locations” as Illinois was reportedly eliminated from the process this week.
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After Toyota said it would be bringing electric vehicle prototypes to the 45th Tokyo Motor Show 2017 later this month, we had hope that there could be an early version of their first electric car that the automaker is expected to launch in 2020.
The company has now unveiled those concepts, three of them, ahead of the show and it doesn’t look like anything they would bring to production.
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Earlier this year, Mazda and Toyota created a new joint-venture to develop electric vehicles and build a US factory.
Now the two Japanese automakers lay out their plans for EVs as Denso, an automotive component supplier, joins them.
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