At present, most car companies in the world are accelerating their transformation to pure electric vehicles. However, the management of Toyota brand still publicly stated that it adheres to the development path of internal combustion engines, that is, fuel vehicles, and stands opposite to the mainstream industry trends.Recently, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda publicly stated in an interview with the media that there are fewer and fewer practitioners in the entire industry standing up to support the internal combustion engine route. This is definitely not a good sign for the healthy development of the industry. He himself is very disappointed with the irrational follow-up behavior of the entire industry swarming towards pure electric vehicles.
As the leading car company that has won the global car sales championship for the sixth consecutive year, Toyota has always maintained a relatively conservative and cautious attitude in advancing the pure electric track. Although the recently launched new models such as C-HR, Urban Cruiser and Highlander all reflect that the brand is increasing its efforts in electrification, its pure electric business still accounts for a very limited share of the overall sales.
Akio Toyoda has long publicly judged that pure electric models will never account for more than 30% of total global car sales in the future.
He also pointed out that there are still a large number of underdeveloped areas in the world, and the local public charging infrastructure cannot keep up. Fuel vehicles are still a rigid demand of users in such markets, and there is no need to promote all-electricity across the board.
Akio Toyoda's resistance to pure electric vehicles is no secret in the industry. In the past, he has stated in public more than once that the full life cycle emissions of pure electric vehicles are not as environmentally friendly as the public imagines. He also directly stated that if Toyota fully switches to the pure electric route, a large number of Japanese practitioners in the entire industry chain will directly lose their jobs.
The market reality before us has given us the most direct feedback. Japanese car brands, which are lagging behind in the pure electric track, have seen their overall sales in the Chinese market with extremely high new energy penetration rates decline for several consecutive quarters. This is the most intuitive example of market feedback on this conservative approach.
