(The following is an op-ed sent to us by Adam Lee, Chairman of Lee Auto Malls, in advance of Toyota’s June 10 annual shareholder meeting)

Toyota can do better

Like many Mainers, I grew up hiking, camping and playing in the Maine woods. Since my son was 4 years old we have hiked and camped up north.  I don’t take it for granted that these woods will always be here or that the water and air will remain clean without all of us protecting it.

I have testified throughout the country for stronger emissions standards, chaired Maine’s energy efficiency board, and even won environmental awards. It hasn’t always made me the most popular car dealer in the room, but that’s how my dad raised me.  He always taught me to stand up for what’s right.

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That is why for years I championed Toyota vehicles. In 2001, when Ford, GM, and Chrysler were building larger and larger SUVs, Toyota introduced the Prius, which got 50 miles per gallon. At the time, we were the third smallest Toyota dealer in the state. However, I was so excited about the Prius that I brought it to every clean car fair in Maine, and in time we became the state’s largest hybrid dealer.

However, hybrids alone are no longer enough to address the growing climate crisis. That’s why for the last twelve years I have driven an electric vehicle. 

While other automakers have continued to evolve, Toyota has fallen to the back of the pack. In 2024, just 1.2% of the vehicles that Toyota sold in the U.S. were fully electric, far below the national average of 9.1%. EV sales have been growing steadily every year in the U.S., and experts expect that growth to continue.

Toyota has intentionally taken a different approach, becoming the leader in plug-in hybrids.  This is great, and we sell hundreds of them.  However, I was shocked to learn that while they develop the best hybrids in the world, they are also supporting climate deniers.  

Over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota became the top auto industry financier of climate deniers, financing 207 of their congressional campaigns. In this last election, Toyota widened the gap with other automakers, donating to more than four times as many climate deniers as Ford and nearly twice as many as GM. After not donating to the Biden inauguration, it donated $1 million to the inauguration of President Trump, who calls climate change a “hoax” and is working to dismantle environmental regulations. 

Toyota has been more aggressive than its peers in lobbying against climate action. It was ranked the third worst in the world–after only Chevron and Exxon–for its anti-climate lobbying, and for the last few years has ranked last amongst automakers. Just days after the election, Toyota wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Trump Can Get EVs Back on Track,” calling on the new administration to dismantle policies that encourage automakers to make cleaner vehicles. 

It also just publicly endorsed a dangerous bill from former car dealer Bernie Moreno. Moreno, who credits Toyota with organizing the coalition of car dealers that supported his Senate run, is trying to eviscerate environmental, climate, and fuel efficiency standards. That would cost drivers tens of billions of dollars and could kill tens of thousands of Americans every year. With weak standards, average fuel efficiency for cars and SUVs actually decreased between 1983 and 2000. In the year 2000, nearly 150,000 Americans died from air pollution. Then we started strengthening environmental, climate, and fuel efficiency standards. 

Thanks in large part to the very standards that Toyota and Senator Moreno want to eliminate, by 2021 those deaths had been more than halved. From 40 years in the car business, I have learned that absent good policy, automakers will not make dramatic improvements in safety or fuel efficiency. Why would we try to reverse the progress we have made?

Don’t get me wrong: I love Toyota and the cars they produce. They are well-made, reliable, affordable cars and trucks.  And they are a great company to work with.  

But even with those we love, we must tell them when they’re falling short. I want Toyota to get back to being the green car company I have been so proud to support. Stop supporting climate deniers, give me more E.V.’s to sell. Toyota can do better.

–Adam Lee, Chairman, Lee Auto Malls, Maine’s largest car dealership chain

Electrek’s Take

While we don’t often run submissions sent to us in full, this one had an interesting angle given that auto dealers have long been one of the roadblocks slowing down fleet electrification, especially in the US.

While it’s true that dealers can often provide a worse EV shopping experience than direct purchases from EV-focused brands, that’s not true of all of them. Some of them get it, and Adam Lee seems to be one of them.

He’s written before encouraging EVs, and has testified in front of several states encouraging higher fuel economy and emissions standards.

So we’d love to see more dealers like this, who understand more about the market and the world they live in, and recognize that you can’t sell cars on a dead planet. Instead of the typical nonsense we’ve heard about from the dealer lobby.

We continued the conversation briefly through email, and Lee brought up some points which we’ve pointed out many times before – that if the US wants to stay competitive globally, it needs to recognize the transition that is happening in the auto industry.

Lee said that other dealers and the car industry as a whole are “all shortsighted” in their resistance to EVs, which is something you may have heard before from yours truly. He mentioned that China is “wisely” focusing on EVs, and that “China will do what Japan and South Korea did, quietly and quickly come to dominate the industry.”

Which is a relevant warning to the company who was the main protagonist in that initial takeover.

Toyota helped push Japan to the top of the list of global auto exporting companies in the 1970s, where it remained in one of the top two spots for the last 5 decades, due to its better processes and technology and its embrace of car styles that better fit a global market that was worried about limited gasoline supply.

That dominance held until last year, where China is now on the top of that list… due to its better processes and technology and its embrace of car styles that better fit a global market that is worried about limited gasoline supply.

The resistance to change could harm not just Toyota, but Japan as a whole. The country is behind on electrification, and car exports are a huge part of its economy. One report says Japan could lose 14% GDP and millions of jobs by stalling on EVs.

And given Toyota’s annual shareholder meeting is coming up on June 10, this is the right time for shareholders to demand that Toyota protect their investment for the long term and take EVs more seriously. The company is not headed in the right direction right now, and needs change. Its investors, its dealers, its customers, its countrymen, and indeed everyone on the planet should be concerned about this.

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