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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Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer has confirmed the company’s plans to develop a full range of “monster” electric hot-hatches, including an all-new electric Golf GTI that will stay true to its iconic namesake with a boxy profile and, of course, front-wheel drive.
After months of conjecture, VW CEO Thomas Schäfer says an all-electric hot-hatch version of the company’s next-generation Golf is, in fact, coming soon. What’s more, Schäfer told the UK’s Auto Express that “it’ll be a monster car.”
And the new Golf GTI? He says it’s just the beginning. “We’ll bring through a whole group of GTI, starting with the ID.2 GTI which is the first one coming electrically,” Schäfer told Phil McNamara. “When we started this journey, [we told the] the development teams, ‘we’ve got to be proud of the GTI of the future,’ and the team’s taking that on.”
Charged up
The upcoming electric Golf GTI’s closest mechanical relative is likely to be the ID.3 GTX, which features a 321 hp electric motor sending power to the rear wheels. Assuming a similar output, that would give the upcoming FWD GTI a staggering 80 more horsepower than today’s 2.0L, turbocharged, ICE-powered GTI.
As a graduate of The Cadillac Allanté School of Front-wheel Drive Performance™, I shudder to think of the kind of torque steer something like a 321 hp FWD hot-hatch would produce – but we’ve come a long way in the last thirty years, and today’s torque-vectoring traction control systems are sure to keep the new FWD VW GTI under control.
In fact, such a system was alluded to back in 2023, when the ID.GTI concept based on the ID.2 (shown, above) was first unveiled:
The way the first electric GTI unleashes its dynamic capabilities is new and exciting. The worlds of the electric ID. GTI Concept and turbocharged Golf GTI meet up when it comes to transmitting the power to the front wheels. A front-axle differential lock—electronically controlled by a Vehicle Dynamics Manager—is used, just like the current generation of the GTI. The Golf GTI and Golf GTI Clubsport were the first Volkswagen models with this traction-control system. With the ID. GTI Concept, an electric Volkswagen now has this intelligent system on board for the first time.
If the big boss is to be believed, the system works. “We’ve driven a few prototypes on the new set-up, and it’s mind blowing,” said Schäfer. “What about the sound? What about the total feel, the handling and so on. It can be done.”
Expect the electric Golf GTI to bow sometime in 2026 with a semi-reasonable price tag, with a hotter, less reasonably priced AWD Golf R version and a smaller, ID.1 based GTI model following a year later.
Electrek’s Take
If the new electric VW Golf GTI doesn’t have plaid Recaro-style sport seats I won’t care, no matter how quick it is, what it costs, how much range it has, or how cool it looks in my neighbor Jeff’s driveway (that dude buys GTIs).
SOURCE: AutoExpress UK; images by pedallingpanda; VW.
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After canceling the upcoming Airflow electric crossover and killing its popular 300 sedan, Chrysler only has one nameplate left in its lineup – but it doesn’t have to be this way. Stellantis already builds a full-size electric sedan that could prove to be a badge-engineered winner.
And, yes – it really should have been the new Chrysler 300. Meet the DS No. 8.
Stellantis’ US brands have had a tough go of the last few years, with Jeep trying and failing to bait luxury buyers willing to part with six-figure sums for a new Grand Wagoneer or generate excitement for the new electric Wagoneer S. The Dodge brand is doing to better with the Charger, a confusing electric muscle car that has, so far, failed to appeal to enthusiasts of any kind. Meanwhile, the lone Chrysler left standing, the Pacifica minivan, made its debut back in 2016. Nearly ten long model years ago.
All the while, Stellantis’ European brands have been forging ahead with desireable EVs – most recently launching the new DS No. 8 high-riding sedan, shown here, back in December … and I’m here to tell you that it really SHOULD have been the new Chrysler 300.
This, but with rich Corinthian leather
With a different grille, a Chrysler badge on the steering wheel, and a few different plastichrome numbers on the back, the DS Automobiles No. 8 could easily be a new-age Chrysler 300. Heck, even the interior’s avant-garde styling and architecturally-inspired stitching could tie-in to the Art Deco-style Chrysler Building in New York, further strengthening the big No. 8’s Chrysler-brand credibility.
Spec-wise, the DS meets the bill, as well. With a 92.7 kWh battery and the standard 230 hp electric motors on board, the electric crossover is good for 750 km (466 miles) of range on the WLTP cycle. With the same battery and a 350 hp dual-motor setup that sacrifices about 40 miles of range for a more sure-footed AWD layout and a 5.4 second 0-60 time that compares nicely to the outgoing Chrysler 300 V8.
The DS offers reasonably rapid 150 kW charging, too, enabling a 10-80% charge (over 300 miles of additional driving range) in less than thirty minutes.
Why it would work
Think of all the reasons the Wagoneer S and Charger Daytona EVs have failed to reach an audience. From the confusing Wagoneer “sub-branding” to the fact that no one was really asking for either an eco-conscious muscle car or a loud EV. On the flip side of that, the 300 is something different.
Since its first iteration seventy years ago, the Chrysler 300 (called the “C-300” back in 1955) has been a forward-looking vehicle. Even the most recent versions, developed off the Mercedes-Benz W210 platform Chrysler inherited while it was part of the “merger of equals” with Mercedes-Benz, looked forward from the malaise-era K-car brand to a bright, Mercedes-infused future.
With the DS No. 8, Chrysler could do it again. It could revive its classic American nameplate on a European-designed platform that wasn’t designed to be a Chrysler, doesn’t look like a Chrysler, and shouldn’t work as a Chrysler, but somehow does. The fact that it could also be the brand’s first successful electric offering in the US would just be a bonus.
Original content from Electrek.
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Powered by tech giant Huawei 5G-Advanced network, a fleet of over 100 Huaneng Ruichi all-electric autonomous haul trucks and heavy equipment assets have been deployed at the Yimin open-pit mine in Inner Mongolia.
With more than 100 units on site, China’s state-backed Huaneng Group officially deployed the world’s largest fleet of unmanned electric mining trucks at the Yimin coal plant in Inner Mongolia this past week. The autonomous trucks use the same Huawei Commercial Vehicle Autonomous Driving Cloud Service (CVADCS) powered by the ame 5G-Advanced (5G-A) network that powers its self-driving car efforts. Huawei says it’s the key to enabling the Yimin mine’s large-scale vehicle-cloud-network synergy.
Huawei is calling the achievement a “world’s first,” saying the new system has improved operator safety at Yimin while setting new benchmarks for AI and autonomous mining.
The autonomous mine project aligns with a broader push by Chinese government and industry to integrate AI and advanced connectivity into traditional industries – an approach we’ve already seen meet with great success in port environments by Hesai and Westwell.
And, if technology like Rocsys’ charging robots take off, these autonomous haul trucks won’t even need anyone to plug them in at the end of their shifts!
For their part, Huaneng Ruichi claims its cabin-less electric offer an industry-leading 90 metric ton rating (that’s about 100 imperial tons) and the ability operate continually in extreme cold temperatures as low as -40° (it’s the same, C or F), while delivering 20% more operational efficiency than a human-driven truck.
The Huawei-issued press release is a bit light on truck specs, but similar 90 tonne electric units claim 350 or 422 kWh LFP battery packs and up to 565 hp from their electric drive motors and some 2,300 Nm (1,700 lb-ft) of tq from 0 rpm.
Huawei executives said the Ruichi trucks reflect the company’s vision for smarter mining operations, with the potential to introduce similar technologies in markets like Africa and Latin America. The 100 asset electric fleet marks the first phase of a plan to deploy 300 autonomous trucks at the Yimin mine by 2028.
Electrek’s Take
From drilling and rigging to heavy haul solutions, companies like Huaneng Group are proving that electric equipment is more than up to the task of moving dirt and pulling stuff out of the ground. At the same time, rising demand for nickel, lithium, and phosphates combined with the natural benefits of electrification are driving the adoption of electric mining machines while a persistent operator shortage is boosting demand for autonomous tech in those machines.
The combined factors listed above are rapidly accelerating the rate at which machines that are already in service are becoming obsolete – and, while some companies are exploring the cost/benefit of converting existing vehicles to electric, the general consensus seems to be that more companies will be be buying more new equipment more often in the years ahead – and more of that equipment will be more and more likely to be autonomous as time goes on.
SOURCES | IMAGES: Huawei, South China Morning Post, and Supply Chain Digital.
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