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Akio Toyoda once again launched a verbal attack on electric cars. According to media reports, in a recent question-and-answer session for business operators and executives, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said: "No matter how much progress electric vehicles have made, hybrid vehicles, fuel cell electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel vehicles will still account for 70% of the market sales." And stressed: "the engine will stay." In other words, Akio Toyoda believes that pure electric cars have only a 30% market share.

In fact, Akio Toyoda has always been hesitant about the "electrified transformation", and it is nothing new to be unoptimistic about the development of electric cars. Every once in a while, Akio Toyoda will make public remarks to resist the electrified transformation. In October 2023, Akio Toyoda said he was right to boycott electric cars, pointing out that his boycott of electric cars was justified by the company's slowing sales, and that people finally realized the failure of the technology and began to achieve carbon neutrality in other ways. At the time, Akio Toyoda said carmakers should continue to invest in hybrids rather than fully invest in electric vehicles. In the following December, Akio Toyoda said in an interview that electric vehicles are "low-level products" and should be boycotted to the end, because the fossil energy sources of electric energy in many countries, if all the cars in the world are replaced by electric vehicles, then it will require twice as much electricity as it does today, putting great pressure on the power grid and causing more carbon emissions.

As early as 2020, Akio Toyoda publicly attacked pure electric cars as over-hyped, claiming that electric cars would stifle companies, require huge investment and emit more carbon dioxide. In his view, "pure electric is not the only way out for the automotive industry." as long as it can save energy and reduce emissions, hybrid should also be advocated. A hasty transition to pure electric vehicles will weaken Japan's industrial base and advocate that countries should formulate practical and sustainable carbon emissions solutions according to their national conditions. if a radical policy such as pure electric vehicles is fully adopted, it may lead to large-scale unemployment of workers and detrimental to Japan's exports.

In the era of fuel cars, Toyota is undoubtedly one of the big winners in both the global market and the Chinese market. However, with the gradual decline of the market share of fuel vehicles, Toyota, which relies on fuel vehicles to seize market share, has shown an obvious decline. And Akio Toyoda is not without action in the field of streetcars. As early as December 2021, Toyota launched 15 electric vehicles in one breath, but from the performance of bZ4X, the first electric vehicle on the market, it is more like a product that is unwilling to be made under the duress of the times. Obviously, Toyota also wants to build electric cars, but the reality can not be achieved.

Take the Chinese market as an example, so far, Toyota has two pure electric models in the Chinese market, namely the bZ4X and the bZ3, but neither of them has shown satisfactory market performance. Retail data show that bZ4X sold 7167 vehicles in 2023, compared with 11 in December, while bZ3 sold 25927 vehicles in 2023 and 1537 in December.

Nowadays, new energy vehicles have gradually become the mainstream of the future development of the automobile industry. from the current situation of the automobile market, independent brands have an absolute leading advantage in the field of new energy, thus increasing the overall market share. According to the data, the retail sales volume of the domestic narrow passenger car market is 21.703 million in 2023, according to the retail data of the Federation of passengers. Among them, sales of new energy passenger cars were 7.74 million, up 36.3% from the same period last year.

In the context of new energy vehicles occupying more and more market share, Japanese joint ventures, including Toyota, which started relatively late in the transformation of new energy vehicles, are falling into a situation of sluggish sales, which also leads to many challenges in the transformation. Industry insiders believe that the competition in the new energy vehicle market in 2024 will roll into more market segments, joint ventures, independent brands and new car-building forces, and the friction between new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles will be more intense, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles is expected to reach 46% in 2024.

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