Why is Toyota so anti-EV? It lost the race to compete, says Tesla and EV Council
Things are getting heated Down Under as a Toyota executive’s recent anti-EV comments in Australia are being challenged by industry leaders, including Tesla. According to the Electric Vehicle Council of Australia, the comments come as the automaker is losing market share over its own hesitancy to go electric.
Toyota has been the most vocal automaker about going all-in on electric vehicles from the beginning.
Japan’s largest automaker consistently lobbied against stricter emissions rules under Akio Toyoda’s leadership.
Although the long-time leader stepped down in January, the automaker’s anti-EV efforts continue. Toyota’s VP of sales, marketing, and franchise operations in Australia told journalists last week, “Right now, hybrid-electric vehicles are a better fit than BEVs for most consumers.”
Hanley continued Toyota’s anti-EV agenda, instead pushing hybrids, a segment the automaker has long dominated.
Toyota’s sales leader added, “BEVs make sense right now in places like Norway where most energy is renewable, and incomes are high,” adding, “But Australia is not Europe.”
The Japanese automaker accounted for nearly 90% of hybrid sales in the nation last year. Meanwhile, Australia’s pure EV sales are finally heating up.
Despite a slow start, accounting for only 3.8% of overall car sales last year, Australians are buying electric cars.
EV sales are up 80% in 2023, now accounting for 7.3% of the overall new vehicle market. Over 65,000 Australian drivers took home a purely electric car thanks to new affordable models like the BYD Atto 3 and Tesla’s Model Y.
Tesla’s VP of public policy, Rohan Patel, took to social media to set the record straight. Patel explained that “Mr Hanley is obviously not much of an expert on the Australian electricity grid or the speed of the transition.”
Pointing to Australia’s transition to renewables, Patel said thousands of Aussies are already running their EVs on 100% clean electricity from the sun.
Renewables accounted for 8% of Australia’s electricity use in 2009. Today, that number is around 32%. The country plans to increase the share of renewable energy to 82% by 2030.
Although Australia imports roughly 90% of its oil, it’s one of the fastest-growing renewable energy producers.
Patel said it’s a “no-brainer” for the Australian government and people to move faster toward EVs. He added they are “too smart than to be tricked by cynical PR that aims to slow the sustainable transportation transition to help sell internal combustion vehicles in the short term.”
CEO of the EV Council of Australia, Behyad Jafari, agreed with Patel. He said the comments “go against what’s in the best interest of both Australian consumers looking to save on fuel bills and Australia’s economy.”
Jafari explained that Hanley was “talking down the battery industry when we’re the ones who can supply the world with EV batteries.” He added:
This is an attempt by them to try to defend their own failings rather than admitting, as they have at a global level, they got it wrong and they’ve been too slow off the market with EVs.
Although Toyota remained the largest automaker in the country, its lead is slipping. The automaker sold 21,000 fewer vehicles this year, while Tesla sold nearly 24,00 more (via TheDriven.io).
To prove it, Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling SUV (gas or electric) through September in Australia. The Model Y topped the Toyota RAV4, Ford Ranger, and Mazda CX-5 on the sales charts.
Electrek’s Take
As Patel and Jafari pointed out, Australia has a massive opportunity to capitalize on the growing demand for EVs.
Australia has one of the largest lithium reserves, accounting for over 50% of the world’s supply.
Toyota’s comments are nothing new. Hanley said he would “lobby for a standard with a generous time frame that will cut pollution without cutting vehicle options” earlier this year.
The Japanese automaker has long lobbied against all-electric vehicles because it’s not Toyota’s forte. Hybrids are.
Toyota has relied on its hybrid technology, neglecting to invest in pure EVs early. The company’s first global EV, the bZ4X electric SUV, had several issues, leading to a slow rollout.
Since then, Toyota has announced a series of innovations, including new battery tech, production methods, and design, to improve the efficiency and cost of future EV models.
Meanwhile, Toyota has sold 76,457 battery electric vehicles through September, a measly 1% of its over 7.5 million total sales.
Toyota is known for its empty promises regarding EVs and battery tech, so we will see how much it comes to market.
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GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
- seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
- two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
- two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.
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While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.
As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”
Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.
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