Toyota the largest auto industry funder of climate deniers in US – report
Toyota has been revealed as the largest auto industry funder of climate deniers in US Congress, according to a report released today by Public Citizen.
Toyota is the largest automaker in the world, having occasionally competed for that title with Volkswagen. It sells more gas-powered, polluting vehicles than any other company on Earth, and thus, it has a vested interest in continuing to sell those polluting vehicles.
But the problem is that gas-powered, polluting vehicles are not good for the health of humans or other living beings on this planet.
The pollution created by gas-powered vehicles damages every organ in the body, kills millions of people per year, and is a primary driver of climate change which is already causing an uptick in natural disasters (as we see currently, with climate change-driven fires destroying 12,000 structures in the last week in the US’ second-largest metro area) and threatens to displace over a billion people.
But that truth is inconvenient to Toyota, whose global revenue from selling polluting vehicles exceeds $300 billion/year. That means that, as one of the richest companies in the world and thus one of the most well-positioned to fund a transition to cleaner vehicles, it has a choice: it can either better itself, or it can do nothing to improve and instead pay people to lie about the problems that its vehicles are causing.
As you might expect, it has chosen the latter.
Toyota ranked as a top pollution advocate, once again
Toyota has repeatedly ranked as one of the strongest funders of pro-pollution, anti-EV, and climate denying propaganda in the world, and a new report out today reveals its growing interest in seeding anti-science attitudes in US Congress, through political donations to climate deniers.
Public Citizen’s report, “Driving Denial: How Toyota’s Unholy Alliance with Climate Deniers Threatens Climate Progress,” analyzes political donations from US auto industry PACs over the last three election cycles, and shows that not only is Toyota the largest funder of climate denial, but that Toyota’s funding of climate denial is increasing, while others are decreasing.
(Edit: Notably, the report only covered company-linked automaker PACs, specifically Toyota, Ford and GM, and donations to Congressional candiates. Tesla CEO Elon Musk did set up his own PAC, and his donations to anti-EV and climate denying candidates vastly outpaced all of the aforementioned PACs combined).
Public Citizen analyzed public records of political donations and past statements by US Congressmembers. It expanded its definition of “climate denier” from previous reports, this time including members who “used other rhetorical tactics like climate doomism (saying there is nothing that can be done), portraying climate activism as alarmism, and who downplayed the need to act to address climate change.”
It found 169 candidates – unsurprisingly, all republican – who had worked to deny scientific truths about climate change over the course of the last three election cycles. Out of those 169 candidates, Toyota donated some amount of money to 143 of them, totaling $810k.
In just the most recent cycle, it found that Toyota gave $271,000 combined to 62 candidates, nine times as much as Ford and more than twice as much as GM gave. Both Ford and GM’s climate denial donations reduced over the last three cycles, while Toyota’s dipped in 2022 and rose in 2024.
These are relatively small dollar numbers compared to Toyota’s >$300 billion in global annual revenue, and it’s money that has gotten results.
How this lobbying affects your lungs and pocketbook
In March of 2024, President Biden’s EPA finalized a new exhaust rule that will save thousands of lives and save Americans over $100 billion in fuel and health costs per year, and reduce climate pollution by 7 billion tons – but lobbying from the auto industry, including Toyota, got those rules softened before they were implemented.
The rest of the auto industry also asked for that softening of the rules, but there is now an opportunity for them to go further. Unfortunately for America, the next occupant of the White House is convicted felon Donald Trump, who finally received more votes than his opponent on his third attempt (despite committing treason in 2021, for which there is a clear legal remedy).
Mr. Trump has stated quite forcefully that he wants to reverse President Biden’s money-saving clean air policies, thus saddling Americans with dirtier air, higher costs and poorer health. This turnaround would also send American jobs to China and attempt to quash the new boom in American manufacturing driven by Biden’s EV rules.
In the past, the auto industry has taken advantage of changes in government, trying to get money-saving clean air rules torpedoed even after implementation.
This time, though, the auto industry is begging that the rules remain in place (after realizing they screwed everything up last time) in order to provide regulatory certainty to an industry with long planning timelines.
But Toyota has broken with the rest of the industry, instead asking the new Congress – that it bought – to give tax credits to its polluting gas-powered vehicles, which harm your health and exacerbate natural disasters.
Toyota’s “green image” is long overdue for a change
Toyota has long rested on the laurels of its previous success with hybrid vehicles, hoping that customers would be fooled into thinking that it is an environmentally responsible company because it sold some vehicles that make slightly less pollution than others for a while.
But conventional hybrid vehicles like the Prius (non-plug-in version) are still gas-powered, and still get 100% of their energy from gasoline. The vehicle’s hybrid drive only works to recover kinetic energy that’s already in the system and redeploy it, increasing efficiency, but still relying entirely on a resource that absolutely, without question, must stay in the ground.
And while Toyota has sold a significant amount of hybrids, the brand still ranks below average in efficiency, according to the EPA automotive trends report. It ranked below all other Asian brands, and below BMW, a brand famous for its large-engine and high-performing sportscars (though ahead of the US Big Three, which sell a lot of disgustingly huge vehicles and need to do better).
This is incongruous with Toyota’s perception among the public, which still consider the company as a green leader despite its long-time advocacy, as covered above, against EVs, against clean air regulations, and in favor of climate denial.
Toyota also portrays itself as a green leader through numerous greenwashing campaigns and anti-science disinformation. Public Citizen recently filed an FTC complaint over Toyota’s false electrification claims.
But is all of this effort to be hostile to life on Earth helping Toyota? Probably not – and it might even know it.
Toyota’s EV intransigence is harming it – and all of Japan
While Toyota’s advocacy could be interpreted as an attempt to protect its profits, this is a short-sighted view.
All industries change, and companies that do not change along with their industry are doomed to failure.
Toyota, itself, was the harbinger of this change in the 1970s, when the auto industry went through a big shakeup due to disruption in the oil and steel industries. Consumers needed smaller and more efficient vehicles that were not being provided by US automakers, and Toyota and other Japanese automakers – which also had superior manufacturing techniques and access to better and cheaper steel – swooped in to provide them.
Despite US attempts at protectionism (which didn’t work then and won’t work now), this catapulted Japan to becoming the world’s top auto exporter, and Toyota remains a global powerhouse.
However, now Toyota and Japan are on the opposite side of this lesson. Worldwide, consumers are demanding electric vehicles at increasing rates, and Toyota not only refuses to provide them, but tries to channel customers to its polluting vehicles instead.
The situation got so bad that the company’s longtime CEO, Akio Toyoda, stepped down in 2023 due to his failure on EVs, but the new CEO Koji Sato didn’t change much.
But someone else is providing the EVs consumers want – namely, China. As a result, China overtook Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter in the last year or so. And Toyota’s business is cratering in the world’s largest auto market because Chinese consumers just don’t want their crappy gas cars.
So the roles are reversed now – China is the new Japan, and Japan, led by Toyota (the largest company in the country, with high political and cultural influence) is responding in just the way that will ensure the same outcome as the last time this happened.
As EV sales grow globally, any company that does not keep pace will find its position diminished. Toyota has shown no interest in keeping pace, and instead is trying to lobby to stop a transition that will happen whether it likes it or not.
And it won’t just harm Toyota, but the entire country of Japan, for which automotive products make up around a fifth of its exports. Japan is reliant on the auto industry, and its intransigence could lead to a huge drop in GDP if it doesn’t shape up.
But instead of looking at all this blatant evidence that its intransigence will harm it, Toyota is doubling down on climate denial instead of trying to catch up with an industry that has clearly left it in the dust.
While Toyota’s short-term lobbying victories may feel good in the moment, they will help neither the company, the health of the humans who work for it who have to deal with the increased pollution its leadership lobbies for, nor the health of the planet it exists on which will be harmed by the science denial it lobbies for.
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Honda’s patent filings offer a clear glimpse into the company’s plans for an ultra-affordable electric motorcycle, integrating a proven chassis with a simple electric powertrain. It’s a clear glimpse into how the world’s most prolific motorcycle maker plans to challenge the nascent electric motorcycle market.
The filings in Honda’s new patent show a bike built around the familiar platform of the Honda Shine 100, a best-selling commuter in India, reimagined in electric form for a cost-effective future of urban mobility.
According to Cycle World’s Ben Purvis, Honda’s patent sketches outline a design that repurposes the Shine’s sturdy frame and chassis mounting points to house an electric motor and compact battery setup. Positioned where the engine once sat, a mid-motor drives the rear wheel via a single-speed reduction gear and chain – mirroring the essentials of the original gasoline-powered commuter bike.
Instead of a traditional fuel tank, the design features two lithium-ion battery packs, angled forward on either side of the spine frame and fitting neatly into the existing geometry.
What makes the bike revealed in this patent even more interesting isn’t just its clever packaging, but rather the platform. By leveraging the proven Shine chassis, Honda can significantly cut development costs, manufacturing complexity, and market price. That’s a big statement given that surviving in price-sensitive markets like India demands simplicity and reliability. And by piggybacking off a proven platform, Honda can dramatically reduce the time to market from the time the boardroom bigwigs give the project the final green light.
The design still seems to feature styling that would be fairly consistent with the Shine 100, even down to a gas cap-like circular protrusion likely on top of a faux-tank. Some electric motorcycles in the past have used this location to hide a charging port, keeping similar form and function to outdated fuel tanks and fill ports, though it’s not clear if that is Honda’s intention.
It’s not clear what power level Honda could be targeting, but the Shine bike from which Honda’s creation draws its design inspiration could provide some clues. The Honda Shine 100 features a 99cc engine that provides around 7.3 horsepower (around 5.5 kW) and has a top speed of 85 km/h (53 mph), solidly planting it in the commuter segment of motorcycles.
The electric motorcycle in Honda’s design would be unlikely to target much higher performance as it would drastically increase the required battery capacity, and thus similar speeds of around 80-85 km/h (50-53 mph) would seem likely.
There also appears to be no active cooling, which would also limit the amount of power that Honda would be likely to draw continuously. The patent describes a channel formed by the two battery packs, leading to the speed controller and creating ducted cooling that pulls heat out of the batteries and electronics without drawing extra power.
This emerging design is just one piece of Honda’s broader electric two-wheeler strategy. Their entry-level EM1 e: and Activa e: scooters launched with mobile battery packs and budget-friendly pricing. Meanwhile, high-tech concepts continually push the envelope. But this Shine-based bike aims squarely at the heart of mainstream affordability – a move likely to resonate with millions of new electric riders in developing regions like India where traditionally-styled small-dsiplacement motorcycles reign supreme.
Honda hasn’t revealed a timeline or pricing yet, but Honda’s patents offer real hope to fans of the brand’s electric efforts. If scaled effectively, this could be the first truly mass-market electric motorcycle from a major OEM, with a sticker price likely far below the $5,000 mark usually seen as a floor for commuter electric motorcycles from major manufacturers. That would also dramatically undercut models from brands like Zero or Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire, even as those brands rush to bring their own lower-cost models to market.
Electrek’s Take
Honda’s patent reveals a clever, no-frills EV designed to democratize electric two-wheeling, especially in developing markets that are even more price-sensitive than Western electric motorcycle customers.
Using a trusted frame, simple electric drive, and passive cooling, I’d say it definitely prioritizes cost over complexity, which is exactly what urban commuters need. If Honda can bring this to market, it would not just add another electric bike to the mix… it could create a new baseline for affordability in affordable electric mobility. Now we’re just waiting for the rubber to hit the road!
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Tesla shareholders will vote on whether to invest into xAI, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s private company, according to a post by Musk on twitter today.
Elon Musk is not just the CEO of Tesla, the electric car company that you may have heard about from time to time in Electrek’s coverage, but several other companies as well. And, famously, Musk companies often share resources – there has been much talk of incorporating SpaceX technology into Tesla vehicles, and putting xAI/twitter’s “MechaHitler”…. er, I mean, “Grok”…. feature into Tesla cars, among other collaborations that have happened over his various companies’ histories.
And today, Musk made it official that he will seek greater collaboration between three of his companies: Tesla, xAI, and twitter, in the form of an investment into xAI by Tesla.
The situation is a little more complicated than that, though.
Tesla is a public company, owned by shareholders. Musk is the largest shareholder, but only owns around 12% of the company himself.
This is a different situation than xAI, which is a private company, owned by Musk. While there are other investors, he can exercise much more direct control over the company, and doesn’t have to put big decisions up to a vote.
One of the recent decisions he made with xAI was to purchase twitter in March. You may say, “wait, I thought he bought twitter back in 2022?,” and you’d be correct. Musk purchased twitter for $44 billion in 2022, which was widely agreed to be far too high a price, and then rapidly saw the company’s valuation drop to under $10 billion.
Then, in March 2025, Musk had xAI purchase twitter in an all-stock deal, valuing twitter company at $45 billion – again, far too high of a valuation, but considering he purchased the company from himself, he could set the price at whatever he wanted.
The move was widely considered to be a bailout of twitter, and the numbers involved considered arbitrary, perhaps partially to help save face for Musk after he made one of the worst business deals of all time.
Now the two are the same entity, and it seems clear that he would like to bring Tesla into the fold, in some way or another.
Musk has already improperly used resources from Tesla, a public company, to boost xAI and twitter, his private companies. Last year, he gave up Tesla’s priority position for highly sought-after NVIDIA H100 GPUs, instead shipping those GPUs to xAI and twitter. Tesla could have used these GPUs for training its FSD/Robotaxi systems, which Musk has claimed is the most important thing to Tesla’s future, but instead graciously sent them to his other company that used them to, uh, train a bot to say Nazi stuff apparently.
xAI has also poached talent from Tesla, multiple times, showing how Musk is using Tesla as a farm team for his private company.
So it hasn’t been a secret that Musk would like to use public money to bail out his private companies, as he’s been setting the stage for for a while now.
Musk has previously “discussed” getting Tesla to invest in xAI in the past, but the idea was never made official until today, when Musk said that he will put the idea to a shareholder vote.
In response to one of his superfans asking for the the opportunity to waste money on an overvalued social media app (which would mark the third time it has been overpaid for in as many years), and the backend fueling “MechaHitler,” Musk said this:
Tesla traditionally holds its annual shareholder meeting around the middle of the year, so if it were a normal year, this shareholder vote might be imminent.
But it’s not a normal year, as just last week Tesla announced an exceptionally late shareholder meeting, pushing it back to November, the latest it has ever held the meeting.
This means that Musk will have around four months to campaign for this idea – something that he’ll perhaps have more time to do, now that he’s no longer cosplaying as a government official.
We don’t know what the structure of the deal might look like yet, but Musk has been clear in the past that he wants more shares in Tesla. After selling many of his shares in order to buy twitter, he later complained that he doesn’t feel comfortable having less than 25% of Tesla. Given that his recent xAI/twitter deal was an all-stock deal, Musk could attempt to fund any investment of Tesla into xAI via shares, giving himself more Tesla shares in exchange for the company gaining a portion of xAI. Though to get him to 25% voting shares in Tesla, that would require either an enormous valuation for xAI, a small valuation for Tesla, or purchasing a large percentage of xAI (or, perhaps, all three, given how much higher TSLA’s valuation is than xAI’s).
We may however have a hint as to how that vote will go, because the last time Musk campaigned for a clearly terrible idea, Tesla shareholders ate it up.
In mid-2024, Musk ended his yearslong absenteeism at Tesla in a flurry of activity, hoping to persuade enough shareholders to vote for his illegal $55B pay package.
That flurry involved firing 10% of the company (supposedly in order to save money – though Tesla’s earnings have dropped drastically since), including important leadership and successful teams, which caused chaos with Tesla’s projects. He also pushed back an all-important affordable car project (which we’ve still heard nothing about) and held Tesla’s AI projects hostage while shifting both resources and staff from Tesla to his private AI company, even as he claims that AI is the future of Tesla.
In the end, these bad decisions worked, and shareholders voted to give their bad CEO his $55B pay package, even though it was later ruled to still be illegal.
So it looks like we’ve got another campaign coming up, and if last time was any indication, expect some really bad decisions along the way. It worked last time, didn’t it?
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The off-highway equipment experts at Perkins and McElroy have teamed up to develop a plug-and-play battery electric power unit designed to help equipment OEMs and upfitters to seamlessly transition from diesel to battery electric power.
Designed to occupy the same space as the companies’ diesel-engined power units, Perkins dropped its new battery power unit into the similarly new McElroy TracStar 900i pipe fusion machine (specialized equipment used to join thermoplastic pipes like HDPE or polypropylene by heat-welding them end-to-end to form a continuous length pf pipe).
Perkins’ battery electric power unit replaces the company’s proprietary 134 hp, 3.6 liter 904 Series Tier V diesel engine, enabling units that are already deployed to be quickly upgraded to electric power – and helping trade allies and development partners to easily retrofit existing equipment in order to add zero-emission options to their operational fleet.
“We’re actively helping customers navigate the shift in power system requirements, with a range of advanced power systems including electric, diesel-electric and alternative fuel compatible engines,” says Jaz Gill, vice president, global sales, marketing at Perkins. “When it comes to the innovative fully integrated battery electric power unit, it can be ‘dropped in’ to a machine to replace a diesel engine. The system consists of a Perkins battery along with inverters, motors and on-board chargers – all packaged up into a compact drop-in system to support seamless transition from diesel to electric for our customers looking to make that move.”
McElroy believes that an electric, emissions-free power unit like this one will open new opportunities and applications for its customers.
“Their team has done a phenomenal job of integrating their battery electric system into our TracStar 900i,” explains McElroy President and CEO Chip McElroy. “We’re really excited to see what the market thinks about this concept.”
Development of the battery electric powered pipe fusion machine was completed in about nine months. Future Perkins-powered electric equipment running the 904 diesel (small excavators, telehandlers, pumps, and gensets) could be developed even more quickly. You can find out more in the company’s promo video, below.
Perkins electric power unit
SOURCE | IMAGES: McElroy, Perkins.
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