Polestar blasts Toyota’s EV strategy, saying “we cannot continue using fossil fuels”
Polestar and Toyota are at two opposite ends of the EV spectrum. The former is building some of the world’s most sustainable electric vehicles, while the latter has been openly opposed to going all-electric. At a recent media briefing, Polestar’s head of sustainability, Fredricka Klaren, took aim at Toyota and its EV strategy (or lack thereof), claiming anything but a fully electric future will fail to address climate change.
“It’s not possible. We cannot continue using fossil fuels,” Klaren responded when asked questions about Toyota’s stance that EVs are not the only way to reduce emissions.
Toyota has consistently stood by its stance, even lobbying against going all in on pure electric vehicles. Instead, it insists on investing in hybrid technology and fuel cells alongside its ICE vehicles.
Despite nearly every other automaker making plans to go fully electric, Toyota is standing by its hybrid strategy. Toyota has one fully electric vehicle, the bZ4X, with 1,220 US sales last year.
Despite the improved electric range on Toyota’s “crown jewel” fifth generation Prius, the hybrid model is quickly becoming the best CD player in a world moving toward iPhones.
Toyota generated less than 1% of total US sales from zero-emission vehicles (not hybrids) and has the least developed supply chain for reducing carbon emissions. As a result, Toyota ranks among the 2022s world’s most obstructive companies on climate policy.
Polestar, on the other hand, aims to build a completely climate-neutral EV with the Polestar 0 project. The EV maker delivered over 50,000 electric vehicles in 2022, solidifying its position as an emerging EV contender. Polestar is calling on the industry to become more transparent about sustainability, and they are not afraid to call out those not assisting in the cause.
At a media briefing this week in Sydney, Klaren said automakers focusing on anything but EVs are taking the wrong approach, adding there’s no place for mass-produced non-EV models after 2030.
Klaren says Polestar is basing its assessments on science, saying:
From our standpoint, our climate strategy is based on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). It’s a top-down approach. We’ve said that we need to be climate neutral by 2040 as a company and we need to halve emissions by 2030, and that’s not what we can do – that is what the climate scientists are telling us we need to do as companies.
She adds that anyone who claims they will fix it in 2040 or 2050 is not listening because we will have already missed our goal.
We only have seven years left until we hit 1.5 degrees global warming. That’s a fact if we continue on the route we’re heading into. So, anything after 2030, we’re not interested.
In particular, Klaren directed her attention toward Toyota and hybrid technology, saying it alone won’t be good enough.
To me, you’re still putting gasoline in the car, so don’t focus on that technology at all. If you keep focussing [and] having that in your business plan, you’re not going to level up in the way you need to do in terms of this new technology.
Polestar is calling on auto industry leaders to do their part to combat climate change, including setting goals and being transparent about them.
All companies need to have that strategy to enable us to combat climate change in time. So that’s our predicament here. We know this. We know there is no place for non-EVs on a large scale after 2030 in that scenario. But OEMs are locked into their business plans. They plan for a transition and I understand that. But the thing is that the timeline is wrong and it’s not in line with scientists, so what we need to do is tear up those business plans and make new ones.
Electrek’s Take
Polestar is on to something here. Global CO2 emissions hit a new record high in 2022, and if we continue trending down this path, it could mean more frequent and severe weather like we saw this past year. Floods, droughts, and extreme temperatures not only wreak havoc on communities but also the food supply.
Atmospheric CO2 levels are around 420 ppm, according to the latest measurement from NOAA’s Mauna Loa Baseline Observatory.
For us to maintain a 300 to 350 ppm average atmospheric level as it has been over the past several decades, something needs to change. The transportation sector is one of, if not the largest, global greenhouse gas contributors.
Polestar is one of the EV makers looking to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future, pushing for transparency across the industry, while Toyota has, for the most part, been dragging its feet.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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