People still need gas cars, most of the world cannot afford electric cars, and certainly lacks the infrastructure.
Whether or not you want electric cars, Toyota going "all in" on electric would imply throwing out cast amounts of revenue for decades - I thought the goal of a pension fund is to ensure that people have pensions?
Used cars will always be an option, and there will be a time when the standard used car on the market is an EV.
> I thought the goal of a pension fund is to ensure that people have pensions?
Yes, through an investment portfolio, and this article states that the 4 pension funds in question have a combined $300 million in shares invested in Toyota.
The article says:
‘Toyota is jeopardising its valuable brand by lobbying against much-needed climate related regulation of the auto industry,” said Anders Schelde, AkademikerPension’s chief investment officer last week. “What is the science based argument for their position, which is what we expect from companies if they are going against most expert views on the role of battery electric vehicles and the required timeline for phaseout of fossil fuel cars.’
Pension fund managers should stick to what they (pretend) to understand: investments. Electric cars have a ton of environmental issues - Lithium mining and related water consumption and CO2 release to name but a few. Toyota should be hailed for sticking to hydrogen instead.
Hydrogen is corrosive, dangerous, and inefficient.
It is not an energy source.
There are much better existing storage mechanisms.
It burns with an invisible flame in daylight, further adding to the dangers already posed by leaks, fires, and explosions.
Hydrogen cars in California cannot take road trips out of the state because there is no place for them to fill up in many other states.
There have been at least two recent major explosion incidents involving hydrogen tanker trucks in California. One of which was kept somewhat under the public’s radar as a truck incident by spinning it as an incident at a hydrogen facility, which is true, but misleading imho.
I've seen hydrogen cars at filling stations that were brought there by tow trucks.
Hydrogen cars are so expensive the manufacturers have to heavily subsidize them. I'm not sure they even sell them; I think they are all leased.
Hydrogen is so difficult to deal with, people who produce it might even have to give it away in some places, depending on location, because nobody wants to deal with it.
Toyota has been out of step on this, and they are still faking out customers imho by using the term "electrified" which usually means hybrid, but fools people into thinking they are talking about BEVs.
The Japanese government, in step with their private industry, created a self fulfilling prophecy through an internal campaign painting hydrogen as the future. Their insistence on hydrogen makes a lot more sense when you consider that Japanese politicians have been making big promises around the technology in the domestic market.
There’s no need to take it as a criticism although I can see how in certain contexts you might. Here it’s meant just as a flat fact. I suppose the op was even aware of it, but if you don’t spell everything out on HN then commenters who miss the main point will jump in and object. I guess you can’t win either way though.
> Pension fund managers should stick to what they (pretend) to understand: investments.
Says you.
Personally I'd like to see more of this.
Perhaps it's less profitable than just going for the highest immediate ROI and who cares about the impact on the wider world. More fair pay & conditions, less exploiting workers. More supporting local communities where they operate, less profit-shifting/tax-avoidance. More caring about environmental impact, less polluting.
I think a lower ROI is worth it if we can achieve these things.
I'm fine if private funds do this (though I don't think investors are smart enough to judge everything), but not fine for pension fund. It's not your money and customers have no choice.
They've got great hybrid-gasoline vehicles, but are insisting that the future is Hydrogen fuel-cell for normal passenger vehicles.
The only ones that benefit from that are Toyota and the fossil-fuel industry who would love for Hydrogen to be the next fuel, because then they can keep their LNG operations going for longer.
Concept vehicles are really nothing more than a marketing effort. They don't represent an actual plan to produce any of these vehicles.
Toyota has a single production BEV, which is due to be released "Real Soon Now" in the US, and next year in Australia. But they're only going to make about 7,000 of them[1] this year.
They are still heavily pushing their fuel-cell vehicles, along with FUD about how BEVs will cause the electric grid to melt down if everyone owns a BEV and all plug it in at once.
For example, this Toyota-sponsored video series from Diana Cowern (Physics Girl) is full of FUD and half-truths about BEVs, while neatly side-stepping the reality that all the cheap sources of Hydrogen are from LNG. [2]
> They don't represent an actual plan to produce any of these vehicles.
Let's do some reading! The Verge article says, "Toyota is ramping up its electric vehicle production schedule, vowing to release 30 electric vehicles by 2030 rather than just 15 EVs by 2025, as was previously promised. The Japanese automaker also vowed to sell 3.5 million battery EVs globally by 2030 and to transform Lexus into an EV-only brand by 2035. The company said it would invest 2 trillion yen ($17.6 billion) in battery vehicle technology, an increase over its previous commitment of 1.5 trillion yen ($13.6 billion)."
Sounds like a plan to me.
> Toyota has a single production BEV
No, they have multiple BEVs - the Toyota BZ4X, a Lexus, a China only Toyota small car, a Toyota Proace van. More to come. Toyota produces both BEVs and FCEVs:
> But they're only going to make about 7,000 of them
7,000 allocated for the US market. The North American EV market is only one third the size of the European and Chinese EV markets. Toyota will target the bigger markets first, especially when it helps them with their fleet emissions requirements.
Your mistake is to construe this in terms of gang warfare or seeing it like a sport. Toyota doesn't care about that.
Toyota just wants to sell cars. ICE, BEV, FCEV, they don't care and they will do it all.
Yes, but incoming regulation is going to make selling gasoline cars increasingly difficult. That includes Europe, especially.
If Toyota is in the business of selling cars, they're going to have problems when large swaths of the population are incentivized to buy electric cars, and Toyota has a limited selection.
So, these pension funds are probably right to be worried that Toyota has dropped the ball on this.
If the only reason selling gasoline cars is difficult is regulations, it makes sense to sell as many as you can before the regulations make it hard. And to try to make sure you didn't make too many that you can't legally sell in the intended market. Economically, it probably makes sense to try to push back on the regulations too.
Seperate from that, you do want to be prepared to switch to what you can legally sell. But there's no reason to ramp up producing a less desirable good before the mandate comes into force. (Of course, you could argue about EVs being more or less desirable... but that's a different argument than saying you should switch before the mandate; I personally think the addressable market is clearly smaller with EVs vs gas powered too; also, I think hydrogen cars are clearly worse than natural gas cars, and natural gas cars didn't survive in the US market, so I don't think hydrogen cars are a good investment, but that's not really the claim either)
Toyota's battery manufacturing capabilities are extremely behind the curve. There will likely be a few years where they are unable to make nearly enough to meet demand. That is why a lot of investors are unhappy.
Whether or not you want electric cars, Toyota going "all in" on electric would imply throwing out cast amounts of revenue for decades - I thought the goal of a pension fund is to ensure that people have pensions?