Toyota president Akio Toyoda has lamented the growing hype around electric vehicles and expressed concerns about politicians pushing too hard to ban ICE vehicles.
While speaking at a news conference for the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, of which he is chairman, Toyoda claimed Japan would run out of electricity in the summer if all vehicles were electric. He added that the infrastructure needed to support a complete transition to EVs would cost the country the equivalent of $135 billion to $358 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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“When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?” he asked. Toyoda added that if the automaker’s home country rushes forward with a ban of ICE vehicles, “the current business model of the car industry is going to collapse.”
Toyoda’s critique of electric vehicles didn’t stop there as he claimed that because Japan gets most of its electricity from burning coal and natural gas, electric vehicles don’t actually help the environment. “The more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets,” he claimed.
Despite pioneering hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell technologies, Toyota has long been quite resistant to electric vehicles. In recent times, however, it has appeared to become more open to the idea of EVs and is developing a host of them to launch in the coming years. Indeed, it is also said to be leading the industry in the development of solid-state batteries and could unveil a prototype as early as next year.
