Toyota’s Chief Says Electric Vehicles Are Overhyped: Akio Toyoda Says Converting Entirely to EVs Could Cost Hundreds of Billions of Dollars and Make Cars Unaffordable for Average People

by Peter Landers (Wall Street Journal) Toyota Motor Corp.’s leader criticized what he described as excessive hype over electric vehicles, saying advocates failed to consider the carbon emitted by generating electricity and the costs of an EV transition.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda said Japan would run out of electricity in the summer if all cars were running on electric power. The infrastructure needed to support a fleet consisting entirely of EVs would cost Japan between ¥14 trillion and ¥37 trillion, the equivalent of $135 billion to $358 billion, he said.

“When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?” Mr. Toyoda said Thursday at a year-end news conference in his capacity as chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

He said if Japan is too hasty in banning gasoline-powered cars, “the current business model of the car industry is going to collapse,” causing the loss of millions of jobs.

Advocates of EVs say they can be charged at night when electricity demand is low and, over time, can grow in tandem with other green technologies such as solar power. READ MORE

Excerpt from Observer: And most of the country’s electricity is generated by burning coal and natural gas, anyway, so it’s not necessarily helping the environment.

Toyota is a leader in hybrid gas-electric cars, which will still be allowed under the government’s plan.

Toyota plans to invest more than $13 billion in electrification over the next ten years as the company targets sales of 4.5 million hybrid cars and one million fully electric vehicles a year by 2030 or sooner.

Right now, electric cars are still significantly more expensive than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles. But the gap is narrowing rapidly. According to a new report on Wednesday by Bloomberg’ energy research branch, BloombergNEF (New Energy Finance), the market average price per kilowatt-hour (kwH) for battery EVs is expected to drop to $101 in 2023, nearing the key $100 per kwH threshold that experts believe would allow EVs to be priced the same as their gas counterparts.

The Bloomberg report predicts that, with battery technology breakthroughs, such as the widespread adoption of solid-state electrolytes (not used in lithium-ion batteries today), price per kwH could fall further to as low as $58 per kwH by 2030, making EVs up to 40 percent cheaper than comparable gas cars. READ MORE