Hybrid Blues: China Policies Force Toyota Into Electric U-turn

Hybrid Blues: China Policies Force Toyota Into Electric U-turn
A Toyota RAV4 EV car with a Tesla battery is seen at the sixth annual Alternative Transportation Expo and Conference (AltCar) in Santa Monica, California Sept. 29, 2011. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
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SHANGHAI—The automotive industry’s seemingly inexorable drive toward electric cars—and especially Chinese polices pushing new energy vehicles—has forced Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s No.2 automaker by sales, into what one executive calls an “agonizing” strategy U-turn.

Until recently, Toyota was one of the industry’s major hold-outs against full electrification, and planned to more or less skip all-electric battery cars and turn instead to hydrogen as a mainstream alternative to gasoline-fueled cars.

In 2013, Toyota Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, father of the gasoline-electric hybrid Prius, told Reuters the hydrogen car was a “practical alternative” to the traditional combustion engine, and if there was any use for the electric vehicle (EV),it was “only as a neighborhood errands car”.

Fast-forward to late last year, and Toyota said it had begun developing a long-range all-electric battery car, which industry experts say should hit the market around 2020. The Japanese firm has put its president, Akio Toyoda, in charge of a new unit called the EV Business Planning Department.

One Toyota executive, who did not want to be named as he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the strategy about-turn was “agonizing” and “heart-wrenching.”

Toyota had for some time predicted conventional hybrids and plug-in hybrids would be a medium-term bridge to hydrogen-powered cars of the future.

A Toyota Mirai on display at EMA Impact Summit Presented by Toyota Mirai at Montage Beverly Hills in Beverly Hills, California on March 23, 2017. (Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Toyota Mirai)
A Toyota Mirai on display at EMA Impact Summit Presented by Toyota Mirai at Montage Beverly Hills in Beverly Hills, California on March 23, 2017. Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Toyota Mirai