On 19 May 2023 at 0:00, Lawrence Rhodes via EV wrote: > They seem to want to go bankrupt.
Toyota is like Fiat (at least used to be) - wedded to the ICE. At top management level, they seem to despise the very idea of true EVs. I'm obvously not an insider, but I suspect that Toyota developed their original hybrid design not as a way to prepare for an EV future, but as a way to fend off EVs and support ICEVs. Stellantis is in the EU, where sales of new private ICEVs have been banned by law from 2035. If they want to continue to compete, Stellantis have little choice but to develop and sell EVs. Toyata is in (duh) Japan, and they have an enormous level of influence in the Japanese government. That's probably why Japan's 2035 ICEV "ban" - wait for it - prohibits the sale of "liquid fuel only" vehicles. In other words, as Europe and China aim for true EVs, Japan is casting their lot with Toyota-approved hybrids. I think that in the long run, Toyota (and Honda, and Suzuki, and Mazda, and, well, Japan overall) will regret clinging so tightly to hybrids. China is likely to do to Japan's auto industry in the 2030s what Japan did to the US's in the 1980s. It will darn well serve them right. I don't think that Toyota will actually declare bankruptcy as a result, but they're likely to become a smaller, less prosperous company. David Roden, EVDL moderator & general lackey To reach me, don't reply to this message; I won't get it. Use my offlist address here : http://evdl.org/help/index.html#supt = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. -- Carl Sagan = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
