Toyota shareholders protest EV stance with votes to oust longtime leader from the board
Toyota shareholders are sending a clear message at the Japanese automaker’s annual meeting this year – it’s time to go electric. Several investors have mentioned they have voted or plan to vote to remove longtime leader Akio Toyoda from the board over the automaker’s EV stance.
Shareholders voice their opinion on Toyota’s EV stance
After Akio Toyoda, the 66-year-old grandson to the company’s founder, stepped down as CEO in January, many believed newly elected leader Koji Sato would bring the automaker into the modern era.
Toyoda has been one of the most vocal critics of going all in on EVs, insisting on sticking to a hybrid strategy despite the industry moving to an all-electric future.
Although Sato explained under his leadership the automaker would “accelerate BEV development with a new approach,” shareholders are still not thrilled with the progress.
In particular, they are pointing out Toyota’s EV stance on not setting a date to go all-electric. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Shareholders including the New York City comptrollers office, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and several European asset managers said they have voted or plan to vote to oust several Toyota directors including Toyoda from their board seats at the meeting Wednesday.
They say their vote is a way of protesting against Toyoda’s policy of not setting a date to go all-electric like most automakers have.
Brad Lander, the NYC comptroller, explained his vote, saying, “Toyota is failing to lean, like its peers, into a timely transition to an electric fleet.” He continued to say:
We want to be persuaded that there is a transition under way and that they’ll take meaningful steps toward an all-EV commitment.
Under its newly elected leader, Toyota has made a series of announcements to help speed up the rollout. The Japanese automaker revealed it would develop a dedicated EV platform as well as introduce ten new EV models by 2026.
One of the first will be a three-row SUV, its first US-assembled electric model set for production in 2025 at Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky facility.
Toyota has also teased several EV concepts, including an electric family SUV (bZ FlexSpace) and a sport crossover (bZ Sport Crossover).
In addition to its first global EV, the bZ4X, Toyota released an electric sedan (bZ3) in China as it looks to keep pace in a rapidly changing market.
However, Sato has yet to set a date to go all-electric, and that’s what shareholders want to know now. When exactly will Toyota be an EV-only automaker?
Electrek’s Take
Although the chances are slim that Toyota will be removed from the board, the votes are being used as a way of protesting to push for change within the company.
While most automakers are already achieving double-digit or 100% EV sales, Toyota continues to fall further behind the pack.
Investors are realizing that Toyota is missing out on profits in key regions like the US, Europe, and China, where EV sales are soaring. With the trend only expected to accelerate, shareholders are getting sick of waiting around while Toyota continues to delay an all-electric future.
The Japanese automaker is aiming for at least 1.5 million EV sales by 2026. For comparison, Tesla produced over 440,000 EVs in the first three months of 2023, delivering over 422,000.
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Joe Rogan got himself a new Tesla Model S Plaid customized by Unplugged Performance, and I think it looks sick.
Dope or nope?
Rogan was not always a fan of electric vehicles. In fact, at one point, he was one of the biggest EV misinformation spreaders.
It wasn’t intentional. Like many, he got caught in the decades of misinformation pushed by the fossil fuel industry and some automakers trying not to make them.
He eventually got onboard after Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, convinced him to get a Model S Plaid during an interview.
The famous comedian and podcaster was impressed by the acceleration of electric vehicles, or more specifically, the Model S Plaid’s acceleration and the overall technology inside Tesla’s vehicles.
For the last year or so, he has been talking about getting a new Model S Plaid and having it modified by Tesla tuner Unplugged Performance (UP). The company has now announced that it has delivered the vehicle to Rogan:
This one-of-one build blends the best of Unplugged Performance’s engineering expertise with Joe’s vision for a perfect blend of class and aggression that can be driven daily. The result is a car that’s as striking in appearance as it is in craftsmanship and performance.
Here’s a gallery of Rogan’s new Model S Plaid:
The main modification is a widebody, which involves a “19-piece prepreg carbon fiber widebody kit that increases the width of the vehicle by 80mm.”
It is also equipped with UP-03 forged monoblock wheels and carbon fiber rocker panels with an integrated Koenigsegg Advanced Manufacturing aerodynamic shark fin at the front wheels.
Here’s Rogan checking out his new car for the first time with UP founder Ben Schaffer:
The vehicle also features UP’s upgraded suspension and brakes.
Dope or nope?
Electrek’s Take
I think it looks pretty dope. I hope it gets Joe to become better informed about electric vehicles because even since he has owned a Tesla, he has kept spreading misinformation about electric vehicles.
I like Joe, but I think he can sometimes be quite careless about the impact of his platform, and I certainly wouldn’t take anything he says too seriously unless it has to do with subjects he is an expert in, which are comedy and martial arts.
As a fan of both, I think he is genuinely knowledgeable on those and worth listening to.
However, recently, I heard him say on his podcast that electric vehicles are worse than gas-powered vehicles for air population because they are heavier and, therefore, produce more brake pad particles.
I couldn’t believe him saying that as a Tesla driver himself. Then he somehow remembered about regenerative braking greatly reducing the use of brake pads in EVs compared to fossil fuel vehicles. I thought he was redeeming himself, but no. He then added that he thought only Tesla vehicles had regenerative braking.
He could really use an EV expert to dispel much of the misinformation he has spread about EVs on his podcast.
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A cartoon image of US President-elect Donald Trump with cryptocurrency tokens, depicted in front of the White House to mark his inauguration, displayed at a Coinhero store in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.
Paul Yeung | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Just days into President Donald Trump’s second administration, Wall Street is singing a different tune on crypto.
“For us, the equation is really around whether we, as a highly regulated financial institution, can act as transactors,” Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick told CNBC on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The newfound optimism among an increasing number of bank execs who were in Davos this week is tied to Trump’s pro-crypto agenda. Trump, a vocal crypto skeptic in his first term, flipped on the issue during his 2024 campaign and came to rely on the crypto industry’s money in his effort to defeat former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president on Thursday issued a sweeping executive order on crypto, with an emphasis on “protecting and promoting” the use and development of digital assets. Banks have been reluctant to support crypto and enable transactions to this point in large part because of the government’s position. The SEC has brought more than 200 cryptocurrency-related enforcement actions since 2013, according to Cornerstone Research.
“We’ll be working with Treasury and the other regulators to figure out how we can offer that in a safe way,” Pick said.
Trump has nominated multiple crypto advocates to critical positions across his administration. They include Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was a commissioner under President George W. Bush. Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is Trump’s pick for secretary of Commerce, and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent was tapped to lead Treasury.
If confirmed, Bessent would oversee the IRS and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which both play key roles in shaping tax and compliance policies for crypto transactions and setting guidelines for crypto adoption in the U.S.
Pick says Morgan Stanley will be working with federal regulators to determine whether it’s possible to deepen the bank’s ties to the cryptocurrency markets. His firm has been more aggressive than its Wall Street peers.
In 2021, Morgan Stanley became the first big U.S. bank to offer its wealthy clients access to bitcoin funds. Last August, it was the first major Wall Street player to let its financial advisors start pitching clients on some of the bitcoin exchange-traded funds that launched early last year. So far, wealth management businesses have only facilitated trades if customers requested exposure to the new spot crypto funds.
Pick suggested that the more bitcoin seeps into the mainstream, the more it’s viewed as a legitimate part of the financial system.
“The longer it trades, perception becomes reality,” he said.
‘Just another form of payment’
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan echoed a willingness to embrace crypto, specifically as a payment option, if the regulatory environment shifts under the new administration. Speaking in Davos, Moynihan emphasized that clear guidelines could unlock broader adoption.
“If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you’ll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it,” Moynihan said in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC.
Moynihan, who runs the second-biggest bank by assets in the U.S., noted that crypto could become “just another form of payment,” like Visa, Mastercard or Apple Pay. However, he steered clear of discussing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as investments or stores of value, calling it “a separate question.”
Another major roadblock to Wall Street’s adoption of cryptocurrencies is an accounting rule, issued by the SEC in 2022, that requires banks to classify cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets. The rule subjects those assets to strict capital requirements, significantly raising the financial and regulatory risks of offering crypto custody services.
Efforts to overturn the rule, known as SAB 121, gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then-President Joe Biden vetoed the proposed legislation, leaving the rule intact and further discouraging banks from adopting digital assets. Banks have been largely forbidden from expanding their crypto offerings beyond derivatives trading and offering ETFs to wealth management clients.
“At the moment, from a regulatory perspective, we can’t own” bitcoin, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in an interview in Davos this week. He said the bank would revisit the issue if the rules changed.
With the pro-crypto Trump administration now in power, there is renewed optimism that SAB 121 could be repealed or revised, allowing banks to custody crypto assets without such burdensome capital requirements.
Bitcoin hit a record of nearly $110,000 on Monday ahead of Trump’s inauguration leading broader gains in the crypto market. As of late Thursday, it was trading at around $104,000.
— CNBC’s Hugh Son contributed to this report.
Tesla has officially launched the new Model Y in North America and Europe after launching it in China earlier this month.
The difference is that Tesla is now taking orders for both the older and newer versions of its best-selling electric SUV.
That’s a unique launch for Tesla. I don’t remember the automaker doing that before.
After launching the new Model Y design refresh in China two weeks ago, Tesla is now starting to take orders for the refresh in North America and Europe.
But it looks like the design refresh is still a transitional in Tesla’s production as the automaker is still taking orders for the previous version:
For the launch in North America and Europe, Tesla has only added a new “trim” on the Model Y online configurator for a ‘Launch Series New Model Y’, which is the version unveiled in China earlier this month.
But in China, only this new version has been available for sale since the last two weeks.
Tesla estimates that the new version will have 320 miles of EPA range. Compared to 311 miles for the previous Model Y Long Range AWD, the only version of the new Model Y Launch Series available.
Here are all the other changes with the new Model Y compared to the previous version:
| Feature | Model Y | New Model Y |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price After Est. Savings | $31,490 Available Now | $46,490 Available Starting March |
| Trims | Long Range RWD Long Range AWD Performance AWD | Launch Series Long Range AWD |
| Range | 277-337 miles (EPA est.) | 303-320 miles (est.) |
| Seating | First row: power recline and heated Second row: manual fold and heated | First row: power recline, heated and ventilated Second row: power two-way folding and heated |
| Displays | 15.4″ front-row touchscreen | 15.4″ front-row touchscreen 8″ second-row touchscreen |
| Ride Comfort | First-generation suspension First-generation noise reduction hardware | Second-generation suspension Second-generation noise reduction hardware |
| Cameras | 7 exterior cameras | 8 exterior cameras (includes a new front-facing camera) |
| Audio | Long Range RWD: 7 speakers Long Range AWD: 13 speakers, 1 subwoofer Performance AWD: 13 speakers, 1 subwoofer | Launch Series Long Range AWD: 15 speakers, 1 subwoofer |
| Connectivity | First-generation hardware | Second-generation hardware |
| Trunk | Power open | Hands-free power open on approach |
| Interior | Footwell and door pocket ambient lighting Wooden detailing with black interior | Footwell and door pocket ambient lighting Wrap-around ambient lighting Aluminum detailing and premium textiles |
| Climate | Tinted and laminated safety glass Power-actuated first-row air vents Manual second-row air vents | Tinted and laminated safety glass with metallic infrared reflective coating Power-actuated first- and second-row air vents |
For the Launch Series, Tesla is pricing the new Model Y Long Range AWD at $59,999 USD. That’s $12,000 more than the previous Model Y Long Range AWD, which is still available to order.
Specifically for the Launch Series, buyers get a bunch of special badging around the car:
But they also get things called “Premium Textil Trim” and “Vegan Suede for Black Interior”:
Currently, Tesla is only offering the new Model Y in Stealth Grey, Pearl White Multi-Coat, Ultra Red, and Quicksilver, but they are all included in the Launch Series price.
The Glacier Blue that is offered in China is currently not offered in North America or Europe.
Tesla is talking about the first deliveries of this new version of the Model Y coming in March in North America.
Electrek’s Take
This came sooner than expected, as most expected the launch to be closer to March based on how Tesla launched the Model 3 refresh last year.
But this is also different since Tesla continues to take orders for the previous version.
Tesla was likely worried about the Osborne effect and this strategy of starting with this more expensive version of the Model Y, the Launch Series, is going to help sales of the much cheaper previous version.
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