Isn’t Toyota already done for? They’re too late to the BEV game. Everyone else has come up with at least an acceptable product, and Toyota doesn’t even have a prototype. Toyota today is like Nokia in the late 2000’s. Nokia was too late to adopt Android and decided to go all in on Windows Phone. It was a decent wager because Nokia was already too far behind competitors in producing Android phones. Too bad they lost.
The only possible way out is for Toyota to purchase another EV maker to adopt the technology. It’ll be a painful learning process but it’s the only thing that will keep them from bankruptcy.
While understanding the sentiment it is too easy to equate Toyota with other OEM’s that have lagged. Unlike most Toyota has enormous resources, can harness technical expertise from Japan’s rail industry which is among the most deeply electrified in the world, plus bath battery, motor and BMS technologies that are advanced. Rather than quotes here I suggest searching for Japanese electric trains. That will help open eyes.
Japan is not like the US or EU countries. The legacy of keiretsu lives on:
en.wikipedia.org
Now they are a bit more flexible than they were, and companies collaborate fairly smoothly.
Toyota is the largest industrial company by far that makes motor vehicles, but they’re active in building construction, sewing machines, robotics, forklifts and on and on.
Now that their operating control has changed we’ll see major innovation in markets within a couple of years. That is late and seriously so but…once Toyota decides firmly on a course it is foolish to write them off.
An apt analogy: The sleeping giant just woke up.
The big losers from the awakening will be General Motors, Ford and Stellantis US. Quite soon all the major EU ones will suffer. Tesla will continue to thrive.
I will be unsurprised if the first major products will be urban use trucks, busses and specialty vehicles. Some of those may arrive next year.
within weeks we’ll have quiet news about battery supplies.
It might well be that some products have already been developed and manufacturing processes already designed and proven. There is precedent for that at Toyota. I don’t expect that, but would not be surprised either.
Frankly it is impossible to overstate the enormity of Akio Toyoda stepping down. As a grandson of the founder he has had outsized influence. As a car nut himself he received a Tesla Roadster from Elon:
Tesla Thanks Toyota CEO with a 2011 Roadster Sport 2.5
I understood that, Mr Toyoda was pleased, but after commissioning the RAV4 BEV powered by Tesla he was convinced that CARB or not, BEV would never work. That very sceptical view later yielded the wonderful Prius, then the Marai. He never imagined how lei-ion could provide practical long range.
(note: during the CARB compliance car days i was consulting with a competitor also located in Torrance, CA. One of my colleagues had worked on the Toyota BEV plans then. Long stories. In the process I drove them all, including a handful of dreadful prototypes. At the time Toyota was wildly elated over Lexus, and thought hybrids were the future.)
in order to join in on the maniacal laughter.
