Tag Archives: Toyota

Toyota Transitions, by Eric Peters

Posted on January 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Looks like Toyota, regrettably, is going woke. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Toyota is the world’s largest single car company. It sells more cars than any other car company. So why would it transition into the world’s largest “mobility” company?

And what does that even mean?

Well, it means that Akio Toyoda – the CEO and grandson of the company’s founder – is turning the company’s direction over to Koji Sato, who is currently the chief branding officer of the company. He will become CEO – and Toyota will shift gears and transition into a company that sells transportation as a service, which is what that term “mobility” means.

In other words, the old model of people buying cars will be replaced by people renting . . . mobility.

In other words – or rather the words of the WEF – you will own nothing and be happy.

There it goes, again.

But, why? And – how?

Toyota is not a dying company on life-support, dependent upon rent-seeking for its ever-diminishing market share – like General Motors, for instance. Or Tesla, for that matter – which has had to resort to heavy discounts to offset declining sales of its hugely expensive electric cars, whose novelty factor appears to be wearing off.

Toyota has no problem selling cars. Especially cars like the Prius hybrid, which is (by far) the best-selling hybrid ever and one of the best-selling cars, period. People love the Prius because (unlike “masks”) it works. Functionally – and economically. People can afford it – and it makes sense to buy it. It does not limit . . . mobility.

It enhances it.

And that is probably the problem – and accounts for the why as regards the pending transition.

Mr. Toyoda thought – and worse, said, in public – that electric cars don’t work. Functionally – or economically.

And for those reasons, they don’t make sense – for the company – if money can’t be made selling them. Nissan – which has already made the transition – might have followed his advice and not lost a fortune losing money on the Leaf, the electric car it “sold” for less than it cost to make.

Mr. Toyoda thought the best interests of the company founded by his grandfather dovetailed with the best interests of customers who bought profit-generating (and mobility enhancing) Toyotas – over and over and over again. Not just the Prius, either. Other cars like the best-selling Camry and the best-ever-selling Corolla – more of which have been sold worldwide than any other car in history, including the Model T Ford and the VW Beetle.

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First VW . . . Now Toyota, by Eric Peters

Posted on November 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

Toyota becomes the next victim of the jihad against diesel (strong competitor to electric). From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

There is a war going on – against the diesel engine. It is being waged, not because the diesel engine is a “threat” to the “climate.” It is being waged because the diesel engine is a threat – to the electric car. The forces pushing the latter use the manufactured “threat” of a “climate crisis” to attack the diesel engine (and also diesel fuel) precisely because it is a threat  . . . to them and their agenda.

It is why VW was attacked with unprecedented viciousness six years ago. It was not because VW “cheated” on government emissions certification tests. In italics to distinguish between those tests and the tailpipe emissions tests most people are familiar with. The “affected” VWs – as they were styled – passed the latter tests with no problem. Hundreds of thousands of them. How unclean could they have been to have been to have been able to pass those tests?

The answer, of course, is that they were – as VW advertised – very “clean.”

No unclean car could “get away” with “cheating” in any meaningful way and not be detected by those tests. It took a very fine-toothed comb  to “catch” VW’s “cheating” – on the certification tests. Which test the engine under a wider range of operating conditions, such as wide-open throttle/under load. VW’s sin – revealed to the public with you-don’t-care-whether-granny-dies hysterics (note the common thread here) was that it had programmed the engine management system of its TDI diesel engines in such a way as to pass those portions of the test – wide-open throttle/load conditions – where the engines’ emissions would otherwise have been momentarily and just slightly higher.

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Hedging Bets, by Eric Peters

Posted on October 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Toyota hasn’t gone all-in on electric cars, and that’s probably smart. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Toyota didn’t get to be the world’s largest automaker by not selling cars. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that Toyota is the only major car company that hasn’t “committed” – as it is styled – to building cars that most people don’t want to buy.

Those being electric cars.

It is neither here nor there whether you believe – exactly the right word – that it is necessary to “transition” to electric cars to stave off what is asserted to be an imminent – for the last several decades (Al Gore has grown gray and fat in the interval) – “climate crisis” if you cannot afford an electric car and/or cannot afford to waste your time (which is even more valuable than money) arranging your life around range-recharge.

Toyota recognizes these economic and practical realities. The rest of the industry acts as if they do not exist. This is like acting as if gravity does not exist when leaning over the edge of a steep cliff.

Gravity does not care whether you believe in it, of course.

Anyhow, while the rest of the industry is operating on the “if we build it, they will come” philosophy and probably hoping that the surge of outright bans on the sale of cars that aren’t electric by 2035 will force people to – somehow – buy what many do not want and most cannot afford, Toyota is quietly building more cars that people do want and can afford.

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Here’s Why Toyota Isn’t Going All-In On Electric Vehicles, by Tyler Durden

Posted on September 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

There are pretty good odds that Toyota will not regret its current strategy. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

While many automakers have committed billions of dollars in recent years to develop all-electric vehicles, Toyota has approached the technology with far more caution – opting instead to continue investing in a portfolio of hybrid “electrified” vehicles, such as the Prius.

2021 Prius hybrid

And while the Japanese automaker was a darling of US environmentalists and ‘eco-conscious’ consumers when the Prius came out two decades ago, given that it was among the cleanest and most fuel-efficient vehicles ever produced – Toyota has fallen out of favor with the ‘green’ crowd thanks to its hesitancy to jump into the fray with fully electric vehicles.

“The fact is: a hybrid today is not green technology. The Prius hybrid runs on a pollution-emitting combustion engine found in any gas-powered car,” said Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All campaign, in a recent blog post.

As CNBC notes, Greenpeace has now ranked Toyota at the bottom of a list of 10 automakers’ efforts to ‘decarbonize,’ citing slow progress in its supply chain and sales of zero-emission vehicles, which are less than 1% of Toyota’s sales.

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