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Akio Toyoda once again launched a verbal attack on electric cars. According to media reports, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said in an interview recently that electric vehicles are "low-level products" and should be boycotted to the end, which is not new energy.

In fact, Akio Toyoda has always been hesitant about the "electrified transformation". In 2020, Akio Toyoda publicly attacked pure electric cars as over-hyped, claiming that electric cars would kill 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 October, Akio Toyoda again blasted that it was right to boycott electric cars, saying that the company's slowing sales proved his boycott of electric cars, and people finally realized the reality of the failure of the technology. and began to achieve carbon neutrality in other ways. Akio Toyoda also said carmakers should continue to invest in hybrids rather than fully invest in electric vehicles.

In the latest report, Akio Toyoda pointed out that electric cars are a long-existing technology, and Toyota launched electric cars in the 1990s. It is also stressed that electric vehicles are not "new energy", because the fossil energy sources of electric energy in many countries, if all the cars in the world are replaced by electric vehicles, then the electricity required will be twice as much as at present. it will not only put great pressure on the power grid, but also cause more carbon emissions.

With the development of intelligence, the automobile market has undergone earth-shaking changes, and new energy vehicles have gradually become the mainstream of the future development of the automobile industry. Although Toyota has announced a large-scale investment in electric vehicles, as a staunch opponent of electric vehicles, Akio Toyoda is not optimistic about the development of pure electric for a reason. Toyota's electrification transformation has been very slow in the past few years, but the fuel car market has performed very well, thus stabilizing Akio Toyoda's position.

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. In this context, Toyota's position in the auto market has gradually changed.

According to Toyota's financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 (April 2023-March 2024), Toyota's sales revenue during the reporting period was 11.43 trillion yen (about 556 billion yuan), an increase of 24 percent over the same period last year, exceeding market expectations. Operating profit of 1.44 trillion yen (about 70 billion yuan), an increase of 156% over the same period last year Net profit was 1.28 trillion yen (62.2 billion yuan), up 194% from a year earlier. In addition, operating margins doubled to 12.6 per cent from 6.1 per cent in the same period.

From the intuitive data, it is not difficult to find that Toyota's revenue, profit and sales have all increased compared with the same period last year, but its sales of electric vehicles are stagnant. Take the Chinese market as an example, so far, Toyota has set up two pure electric models in the Chinese market, namely the bZ4X and the bZ3, but the two models do not have a high sense of presence in the electric vehicle market. FIFA retail data show that FAW-Toyota sold 7156 bZ4X vehicles from January to November 2023, while FAW-Toyota bZ3 sold 24390 vehicles, which lagged behind the monthly sales performance of Tesla Model Y and Model 3.

From Toyota's strategic swing for many years, we can also see that Toyota does not have a clear and unified goal for the transformation of new energy, which leads to the difficulty of Toyota's new energy transformation far more than Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford, Honda and other automobile companies.

According to the plan, Toyota plans to triple its production of electric vehicles to its 2024 target by 2025, with a target of 190000 electric vehicles by 2024. As for the future of Toyota, time will tell.

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