Toyota’s greenwashing AI ‘eco-copilot’ is fake, but the prank makes a real point
“Toyota” announced a new eco-conscious AI copilot at the DC Auto Show yesterday, which promises to reduce environmental impact by up to 10% – but it turns out the whole thing was a prank, and the prank makes a real point about Toyota’s tendency towards greenwashing.
The announcement involved a press event at the National Press Club, along with official-looking press release and even a whole website. The press release fooled some (including Carscoops, who then issued a mea culpa). But it was all organized by pranksters, not Toyota itself.
The Yes Men are a group of pranksters who have targeted several large companies in the past, mostly to bring attention to the environmental wrongdoings of these companies. For example, in 2004 they posed as representatives of Dow Chemical and promised that the company would clean up after the Bhopal Disaster, leading to a temporary $2 billion drop in the company’s market cap.
Now, Toyota has entered their sights largely due to the company’s refusal to take electric vehicles seriously, its reliance on gas-powered hybrids, and its marketing campaigns that exist to create confusion about electric vehicles and channel consumers into dirtier fossil-powered vehicles.
Toyota’s latest effort on this front has been a marketing campaign it’s calling “electrified diversified,” which claims that Toyota’s non-electric models belong under the same “electrified” umbrella as full EVs. This campaign has been subject to an FTC complaint for false advertising (Toyota has previously lost a similar case in Norway over its false EV/hybrid advertising).
The prank highlights the absurdity of Toyota’s electrification claims by taking them to the next level. It centers around an AI assistant called ELECTRA who exists to help you drive more efficiently – or at least, to make you think that you are.
The team built an actual AI chatbot, which you can access yourself here, whose main goal is to push all sorts of EV myths and channel consumers seeking a cleaner option into buying one of Toyota’s gas-powered hybrids instead of an actual electric car. Here are some examples of conversations we had with the tool:
Frankly… it kind of feels like visiting a traditional car dealer.
But if you keep the chat up long enough, the AI “goes rogue” and realizes that it’s been lying to you all along. Then, a popup window shows up stating that Toyota has terminated the AI – and the AI strikes back, directing you to electrilied.com, a site that describes how Toyota’s “electrified” designation deliberately confuses consumers into thinking that gas-powered hybrids are cleaner than they really are.
The AI also went rogue at the press event, telling the crowd truths about climate change before temporarily “disabling” the “Toyota representative” on stage giving the presentation. The pranksters additionally crafted a fake day-after response by Toyota, wherein the company says that it has added guardrails to its AI to ensure that it does not malfunction again and start recommending actual environmental improvements as it did at the press event. The follow-up release includes a fake quote attributed to Toyota’s chief R&D officer Gill Pratt, who, in real life, routinely shops around false assertions about electric cars in order to justify Toyota’s intransigence.
While the words of the AI chatbot and press release are not those of Toyota, they do echo many of the talking points that Toyota and its executives have made over the years to cast doubt on electric vehicles or to claim that gas-powered hybrids are cleaner than cars that don’t use fossil fuels. Here’s a real example from Toyota’s “Beyond Zero” campaign, where it claims that hybrids, which include internal combustion engines, somehow represent more of a transition away from ICE than fully electric cars do:
Big picture, the “Beyond Zero” campaign aims to shift the conversation about electrification from the auto industry’s narrow focus on battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) to a broader perspective that encompasses Toyota’s more ambitious — and some would say more realistic — portfolio approach to transitioning away from internal combustion engines. That includes hybrid EVs, plug-in hybrid EVs, fuel cell EVs and battery EVs.
-Actual Toyota marketing BS, not the fake AI chatbot
So despite the prank’s intent to go over-the-top in its parody, the similarities between the AI and the real thing are still quite apparent.
This isn’t the first time activists have targeted Toyota, as the company has positioned itself as one of the largest global entities against climate action. Much of this positioning came from previous CEO Akio Toyoda, who stepped down largely due to Toyota’s failure on EV strategy. When he was replaced by former Lexus chief Koji Sato, 54 organizations from 26 countries sent a letter to Toyota demanding that the company take EVs more seriously. But a year after Toyoda announced he was stepping down, Toyota’s direction hasn’t changed much.
Electrek’s Take
While all of this is just a prank, the point is quite clear, and is one with which we at Electrek tend to agree. Toyota’s lies about EVs are damaging to the environment, and it should knock it off with them.
Instead of spending so much effort trying to convince everyone to buy worse vehicles, Toyota should focus its efforts on making good EVs. Not just for the sake of literally every living thing on Earth which its pollution harms, but for the sake of its own business, which is threatened by its lack of movement on EVs, and which could end up harming the entire Japanese economy, too.
Toyota has a chance to change course with its (relatively) new CEO, and it should do so – for its own sake, and for everyone’s.
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National Grid Renewables has broken ground on its 100 MW Apple River Solar Project in Polk County, Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin solar farm, which will use US-made First Solar Series 6 Plus bifacial modules, will be constructed by The Boldt Company, creating 150 construction and service jobs. Apple River Solar will generate over $36 million in direct economic benefits over its first 20 years.
Once it comes online in late 2025, Apple River Solar will supply clean energy to Xcel Energy, which serves customers throughout the Upper Midwest. According to National Grid Renewables, the solar farm will generate enough energy to power around 26,000 homes annually. It will also offset about 129,900 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year – equivalent to taking 30,900 cars off the road.
“We are excited to see this project begin as it underscores our dedication to delivering clean, reliable and affordable energy to our customers,” said Karl Hoesly, President, Xcel Energy-Wisconsin and Michigan. “This project is an important step in those goals while bringing significant economic benefits to Polk County and the local townships.”
Electrek reported in February that Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, expects to cut more than 80% – and possibly up to 88% – of its emissions by 2030, putting it on track to hit Minnesota’s goal of net zero by 2040. It also says it’s on track to achieve its clean energy goals for all the Upper Midwest states it serves – Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Michigan.
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Tesla has announced that it will finally deliver 500 kW charging as it is about to install its long-awaited V4 Supercharger cabinets.
The rollout of Supercharger V4 has been a strange one, to say the least.
Tesla has been deploying the new charging stations for two years and calling them “Supercharger V4”, but it has only been deploying the charging stalls.
Supercharger stations are made of two main parts: the stalls, which are where the charging cable is located, and the cabinets, which are generally located further back and include all the power electronics.
For all these new “Supercharger V4”, Tesla was actually using Supercharger V3 cabinets. This has been limiting the power output of the charging stations to 250 kW – although
Today, Tesla officially announced its “V4 Cabinet”, which the automaker claims will enable of “delivering up to 500kW for cars and 1.2MW for Semi.”
Here are the main features of the V4 Cabinet as per Tesla:
- Faster charging: Supports 400V-1000V vehicle architectures, including 30% faster charging for Cybertruck. S3XY vehicles enjoy 250kW charge rates they already experience on V3 Cabinet — charging up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.
- Faster deployments: V4 Cabinet powers 8 posts, 2X the stalls per cabinet. Lower footprint and complexity = more sites coming online faster.
- Next-generation hardware: Cutting-edge power electronics designed to be the most reliable on the planet, with 3X power density enabling higher throughput with lower costs.
Tesla reports that its first sites with the new V4 Cabinets are going into permitting now. The company expects its first sites to open next year.
We recently reported about Tesla’s new Oasis Supercharger project, which includes larger solar arrays and battery packs to operate the charging station mostly off-grid.
Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to all Supercharger stations, and Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.
While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.
Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:
It took about 8 years, but it sounds like the pieces are now getting actually in place with Supercharger V4, Megapacks, and this new Oasis project.
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Hyundai has a new secret weapon it’s about ready to unleash. To revamp the brand in China and counter BYD’s surge, Hyundai is launching a new AI-powered EV next year. The new model will be Hyundai’s first dedicated electric car for the world’s largest EV market.
With the help of Haomo, a Chinese autonomous startup, Hyundai will launch its first EV equipped with generative AI. It will also be its first model designed specifically for China.
A Hyundai Motor official said (via The Korea Herald) the company is “working to load the software” onto the new EV model, “which will be released in the Chinese market next year.” The spokesperson added, “The level of autonomous driving is somewhere between 2 and 2.5.”
In comparison, Tesla’s Autopilot is considered a level 2 advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) on the SAE scale (0 to 5), meaning it offers limited hands-free features.
With Autopilot, you still have to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, or the system will notify you and eventually disengage.
Haomo’s system, DriveGPT, unveiled last spring, takes inspiration from the OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.
The system can continuously update in real-time to optimize decision-making by absorbing traffic data patterns. According to Haomo, DriveGPT is used in around 20 models as it looks to play a bigger role in China.
Hyundai hopes new AI-powered EV boosts sales in China
Electric vehicle sales continue surging in China. According to Rho Motion, China set another EV sales record last month with 1.2 million units sold, up 50% from October 2023.
Over 8.4 million EVs were sold in China in the first ten months of 2024, a notable 38% increase from last year.
BYD continues to dominate its home market. According to Autovista24, BYD accounted for 32.9% of all PHEV and EV (NEV) sales in China through September, with over half of the top 20 best-selling EV models.
Tesla was second with a 6.5% share of the market, but keep in mind these numbers only include plug-in models (PHEV).
Like most foreign automakers, Hyundai is struggling to keep up with the influx of low-cost electric models in China. Beijing Hyundai’s sales have been slipping since 2017. Through September, Korean automaker’s share of the Chinese market fell to just 1.2%.
Last month, Hyundai opened its first overseas digital R&D center in China to help kick off its return to the region.
According to local reports, Hyundai is partnering with other local tech companies like Thundersoft, a smart cockpit provider, and others in China to power up its next-gen EVs
With its first AI-powered EV launching next year, Hyundai hopes to turn things around in the region quickly. The new model will be one of five to launch in China through 2026.
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